Dewald Brevis: The AB de Villiers copycat, who has found his own wind

written by Atharva Jori

With a blistering century backed by a fiery fifty, 22-year-old Dewald Brevis has arrived on the international arena in style. Just like his childhood hero, AB de Villiers, Brevis can play the lap shot, scoop, switch hit, ramp, and reverse sweep. He is finally showing his class, and his coach Deon Botes, who also coached De Villiers and Faf du Plessis, shares how the child prodigy battled his dark phase and turned it around by going back to the basics Growing up in Mohali, in a 2BHK flat, Shubman Gill’s favourite pastime was copying his childhood hero -- Virat Kohli. He would try to imitate his walk, his cover drive, his celebration, and even played most of his early career with a red handkerchief tucked in his trousers. Around 8,782 kilometers from Mohali, in Pretoria, in the Brevis’ backyard, Dewald and his elder brother Reinardt, wearing Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers’ Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) jerseys, used to mimic both the legends with match simulations -- imagining themselves pulling off a heist for RCB. Both of them hit a wall. Form deserted them, critics came out with swords, but their heroes stood like rocks and kept backing them. Back in 2019, when Gill first entered the Indian dressing room in New Zealand, Kohli famously said: “I saw him bat in the nets and I was like 'wow -- I was not even 10 percent of that when I was 19.'” Similarly, De Villiers also helped Brevis in his early days. “I have been his mentor for about two years now and helped him with his batting and his attitude towards cricket,” De Villiers had told Netwerk24 in 2022, when the youngster burst onto the scene in the U19 World Cup.