New Delhi: Somewhere between waves in Cape Town and the chaos of the Indian Premier League, Dewald Brevis has figured out the hardest thing for a modern cricketer to pull off.
It is neither innovation, nor power hitting, nor the intense social media scrutiny players go through. It is staying true to himself.
In an era where every failure is dissected and measured against replacement options breathing down their necks, Brevis has spent the last few years learning that the danger was never getting out while playing his shots. Instead, the danger was when he drifted away from his game and lost himself.
“I’m just being true to myself,” Brevis told HT. “I’m not trying to be someone else. This is how I play and this is how I want to play in my career.”
For a player whose game is built on audacity – scoops, angles and challenging geometry — his innovation is now rooted in trying to protect his natural instinct. Although he admits he was lucky to have guidance from his high school coach Deon Botes and later, the influence of AB de Villiers and MS Dhoni, there was also some pressure to change.
There were phases where other coaches wanted him to “tone it down”, phases where he listened to too many voices and tried to absorb too much information. For a while, Brevis felt himself slipping into that trap.
“Obviously I went through a few years and I wasn’t true to myself,” said Brevis.
The correction came through a simple piece of advice from KL Rahul during his first IPL season.
“‘Be true to yourself and the way you play,’ he told me. I went through a phase where I wasn’t listening to that because I was trying to take in too much and wasn’t being myself.” “Once you’re true to yourself, even if the dismissal doesn’t look great, you know next time that shot is a six or a boundary. It’s about believing that and backing yourself.”
Brevis says the line stayed with him because it cut through the noise. It did not necessarily encourage recklessness, but instead, reaffirmed his identity. It is easy to straitjacket Brevis as a fearless batter, but Brevis speaks less like a gambling risk-taker and more like someone deeply aware of his strengths. He constantly reflects on his dismissals, not merely asking whether a shot was right or wrong, but whether it felt authentic.
“The one question I always ask,” he says, “Am I happy with this? Is this the way I play?”
And if the answer is yes, the outcome matters less. “It might not look great, the way you go out,” he says. “But if it is true to yourself, you know next time that’s a six.”
Surfing is one of Brevis’ happy places. Whenever he is back in Cape Town, he chases waves and silence. But even there, he borrows lessons that he carries to the cricket field. “Sometimes it’s hard to find the right wave… you paddle, duck under waves, keep fighting and then once the wave comes, you ride it.
“Batting is similar. You go through phases where runs flow, and then you have to find your way back onto the wave again. You paddle out there into the ocean waiting to catch the wave,” he explains. “Once you’re on the wave, you mustn’t forget those times when you were paddling out.”
Brevis’ cricket is unconventional, batting almost non-conformist, and it is fitting that he talks about the sport in non-technical terms. He talks about flow, visualisation, feeling and subconscious learning. As a visual learner, he consumed endless footage of AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma growing up and ended up absorbing movements without even realising it.
“Without knowing what I see, I learn,” he said. “It goes into your subconscious mind. That’s how my batting developed as well.”
The comparisons with de Villiers have followed him since his U-19 days. He was called “Baby AB,” but the South African has never viewed the label as pressure. “Being compared to him has always been a privilege and an honour. It’s never been a burden, only a privilege. But at the same time, I’m my own person – I’m DB.”
