"His dream is to play for the Proteas and playing in South Africa is very important to him," Weber van Wyk, Brevis' agent ©BCCI
If you're a cricketminded South African, Dewald Brevis should scare you. Not because of his potential, nor the comparisons with his hero, AB de Villiers, nor the fact that the teenager is a household name in households far from his country. The worry is that he has no use for South African cricket.
Brevis' Mumbai Indians salary is, per week, almost five times as much as Graeme Smith was paid by CSA to be their director of cricket. Smith was appointed on the strength of the relationships he built while playing 117 Tests, 197 ODIs and 33 T20Is in an international career that endured for almost 12 years. Brevis has yet to play a single first-class or list A match, much less a game for South Africa's senior team. Why should he bother when, with his 19th birthday looming on Friday, he is paid exponentially more than Smith, and 16 times the average annual South African salary for nine weeks' work?
Weber van Wyk, Brevis' agent, begged to differ. "He's come through a system in which South African cricket has given him many opportunities to prepare him for hopefully a long career in franchise and international cricket," Van Wyk told Cricbuzz. "His journey may be different to other players', but I wouldn't say he doesn't need South African cricket. It's quite the opposite. His dream is to play for the Proteas and playing in South Africa is very important to him."
Those are emotional and sentimental reasons for staying true to the game in South Africa, and they are admirable. But De Villiers expressed much the same feelings for years, and when push came to shove in terms of his workload he chose the franchise circuit and retired from international cricket at 34. What happens if Brevis faces a similar choice? "Dewald's career is just starting and he is just focusing on what is ahead of him month to month and just thankful for opportunities he is getting," Van Wyk said.
Fair enough. Who can say what decision Brevis might make once he is an established player and adult? But it won't reassure those who were alarmed by what they considered De Villiers' defection that Brevis going the same way cannot be ruled out. Their concern will grow every time he delivers an impressive performance at the IPL, of which there have already been several.
Having sat out Mumbai's first two matches, Brevis made his debut against Kolkata Knight Riders on April 6 in Pune, where the crowd of 21,000 would have held an exponentially bigger than he had yet seen as a player. He seemed unfussed by that,