Dewald Brevis held his bat aloft. If you looked closely enough, you could see the indents.
A cluster of circular and semicircular prints that can only be caused by a leather ball on willow.
They were in the region that spanned from around 150mm from the toe of the bat to close to the middle of the blade — the sweet spot.
However, Brevis wasn’t wielding his bat high for the thousands of spectators at the Marrara Cricket Ground in Darwin to admire the grouping of indents.
He was acknowledging and saluting the crowd as they walked him off the pitch with a standing ovation.
They weren’t able to see the marks on the bat; however, they had watched him play an innings of the ages as he created them.
RELENTLESS, DRIVEN AND DEEPLY AMBITIOUS
Brevis tonked 12 fours and eight sixes on his way to an unbeaten 56-ball 125, which laid the foundation for South Africa’s comfortable 53-run win over Australia.
The 22-year-old indiscriminately attacked pacers and seamers in his history-making innings; he now holds the record for the most runs by a South African batter against Australia in a T20I innings.
Top of the list 🇿🇦🔝
— SuperSport 🏆 (@SuperSportTV) August 12, 2025
Dewald Brevis has the highest score by a South African in T20 Internationals ✨#SSCricket | #AUSvRSA pic.twitter.com/XOfkj2rlxJ
“That was a coming-of-age knock,” Billy Brown, Brevis’s former U14 and U15 coach at Affies, shared.
The retired teacher would know, he has watched Brevis go through the various stages of development as a cricketer.
According to Brown, Brevis’s talent was undeniable from the onset; however, what made him stand out were three qualities: he was relentless, driven, and deeply ambitious.
“You saw it in the way he pushed himself. He was hard on himself whenever he underperformed. He reacted the same way when he was dismissed for two (in the first T20I against Australia),” Brown shared.
That is a theme that has been recurrent in the 22-year-old’s professional career.
In December last year, Brevis made a trip to Cape Town to seek guidance from Deon Botes.
Brevis hadn’t enjoyed a stellar year in 2024, but also hadn’t had a terrible one either.
He showed glimpses of brilliance and looked untouchable in some matches, and bombed in others.
Other cricketers would have taken that season on the chin, continued with their training regimes as normal and tried to do better.
Not Brevis. He spent a part of his Christmas holidays holed up in the Paul Roos Indoor Centre, tearing down and rebuilding his game with Botes’s assistance.
“When he struggled, many people came to him with advice on what to do. Instead of accepting or discounting all of it, we put it to the test. We did drills to see if it works for him. The indoor centre was a safe space, away from the noise. The important thing was not to be right, but to find what works for him,” Botes shared.
During those sessions, Brevis faced thousands of deliveries until he developed blisters.
Instead of stopping because of the discomfort, the 22-year-old batted through the pain.
Their first port of call was focusing on his strengths. Botes landed countless deliveries in areas where Brevis could express his strengths, and the 21-year-old played the same shot again and again.
If it meant creaming 500 consecutive cover drives, Brevis did so wholeheartedly.
Then they turned their attention to his weaknesses. Botes used the side-arm and bowling machine to put Brevis in uncomfortable positions and asked him to find solutions.
“The important thing was for him to get into good positions, strong positions, to put the bowler under pressure,” Botes explained.
BUILDING A FOUNDATION THE KEY TO SUCCESS
Coach and student worked on Brevis being still for a little longer, creating room for himself and playing with a straight bat.
By going back to Botes, his coach during his final three years at Affies, Brevis was living the advice Brown gave him early in his career at the school.
“In one of his first matches for the U14 team, Dewald tried to go over extra cover on the second ball he faced. He wasn’t successful and was dismissed. The next day, I asked him to come to my office for a chat,” Brown recalled.
According to the coach, he slid a paper across the desk and asked Brevis to draw a house. The youngster obliged. Brown asked Brevis how long he thought the house would stand. The teenager replied with years in triple figures. Brown differed.
“Your house doesn’t have a foundation, and without a foundation, it will collapse soon. That's your approach to your batting. Get the foundation, and then you start building the house,” Brown advised the boy.
Brevis added a foundation and walked out of the office with a new perspective. A year later, the teenager scored 121 runs from 101 deliveries in a must-win encounter against Menlopark.
He also took a five-wicket haul and helped the team clinch victory. Brevis inscribed a message of gratitude on the bat and gifted it to Brown.
Seven years later, Brown felt the same jolt of pride as he watched young Brevis stake his claim in international cricket.
The 22-year-old had shown glimpses of what he could do with high-impact knocks against New Zealand and Zimbabwe, but none of them was a notable milestone.
The century against Australia, on the other hand, was an unmissable landmark that proclaimed Brevis’s arrival in international cricket.
An innings of pure power, skill, and composure! 💥
— Proteas Men (@ProteasMenCSA) August 12, 2025
Dewald Brevis became the youngest-ever South African to score a T20I century, a knock that earned him the Player of the Match award. 🌟🏏#WozaNawe pic.twitter.com/lCduxdshQx