Dewald Brevis: The AB de Villiers copycat, who has found his own wind
New Delhi:
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.
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Brevis has had a similar trajectory to Gill. Like Gill, he was portrayed as the next 'prince.'
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.
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In the last couple of months, Gill, the anointed prince, found his feet in Test cricket, smashing 754 runs in his first Test series as captain. It was Kohli again who wrote a special message for his successor at No. 4: 'Well played star boy. Rewriting history. Onwards and upwards from here. You deserve all this,' Kohli wrote after Gill scored a sublime 269 and 161 at Edgbaston.
Likewise, earlier this week, when Brevis smoked a 41-ball hundred against Australia, De Villiers went gung-ho over his countryman's knock and took a shot at the IPL teams, saying: 'The boy can play.'
What changed for Gill and Brevis?
Before Shubman Gill was appointed Team India's Test captain, he wanted to prove himself in England. He practiced with the red Dukes, worked on his trigger movement, and sought help from his cricket-tragic father Lakhwinder Singh Gill.
Gill Sr. reminded the youngster why he was such a prolific run-scorer at the age-group level and in the Ranji Trophy, and asked him to 'go back to the basics.' A confident Shubman even predicted that he wanted to be the best batter in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, and boy, did he walk the talk.
Dewald Brevis with his childhood coach Deon Botes. (Special Arrangement)
For Dewald Brevis, it was his childhood coach Deon Botes -- who has played a massive role in the development of several South African cricketers, including AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis.
Botes, an Economics professor and former Director of Sport at Afrikaans Hoër Seunskool, more popularly known as Affies, shared how the child prodigy battled his dark phase and turned it around.
'He went back to his basics. So, I think with the T20 game, he might have gone a bit loose technically,' Botes told
TimesofIndia.com
.
Poll
Who do you think has a brighter future in cricket, Shubman Gill or Dewald Brevis?
Shubman Gill
Dewald Brevis
Both have equal potential
Neither will make a significant impact
'In T20 cricket, obviously power hitting plays a big role. And I think he got a bit stuck with that. Playing a bit more red-ball cricket in the domestic league, I think, helped him just to fine-tune his technique a bit. So, it just looks like the old Dewald Brevis that we knew. I think he's basically gone back to what he knows works, and it's been successful for him.'
Brevis' redemption
Last year, after Christmas, Brevis called Botes asking for help.
'So, last year, on the 28th of December, he came back to me and we worked for three days on his game again. Just going back to the basics, to what he was used to,' shared Botes.
'He just wanted to get back to basics, which we did. And we basically gave him a clearer mind of what he wanted to do. A lot of people talk to you and there's a lot of noise about you, and at times, you kind of lose track of what you actually want to do and what works for you.
Dewald Brevis with coach Deon Botes at the Afrikaans Hoër Seunskool. (Special Arrangement)
'So, he came back to me at the end of last year to just get back to his roots, back to the basics, and to find the right way for him to score. It was tough, but we had lots of conversations and lots of sessions to work through it.'
When asked whether playing too much T20 cricket had corrupted Brevis' technique, Botes said: 'He really wanted to play cricket at the highest level and to show his skills and abilities. So, I think it was never about that for him.
'He just wanted to play and score runs and be good. That's basically all. Somewhere in this process, he might have got a bit confused about what he wanted to do. Like I said, there's a lot of noise around playing like that, with people talking to him as a youngster. It's probably difficult for him to work out who to listen to and who not. But he can't listen to everybody. So when he came back to me, it was just about having one voice and going back to what works for him.
'
Dewald Brevis of South Africa bats during the T20 international cricket match between Australia and South Africa in Darwin, Australia, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (Jono Searle/AAPImage via AP)
Botes feels his ward is ready to take all three formats by storm.
'I think he can definitely play in all three formats for South Africa. He's already played in two of them. So it's just the 50-over game he hasn't debuted in yet, but I think that will come now.
'Yes, I think he'll be successful in all three. I think Dewald would actually appreciate the long format, red-ball cricket. And I think he's good enough to make it in all three formats,' he said.
Make way for the Next Gen
Every cricket lover has lived that moment, standing before a mirror, trying to mimic a hero's batting stance or a bowler's graceful run-up and release. Most imitations end in awkward copies, but a rare few manage to carry those borrowed styles all the way to the international stage. It's the perfect embodiment of the saying: fake it till you make it.
CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA - AUGUST 16: Dewald Brevis of South Africa bats during game three of the Men's T20 International series between Australia and South Africa at Cazaly's Stadium on August 16, 2025 in Cairns, Australia. (Photo by)
Experts often insist that a player's trademark shot or bowling action is inimitable, something born of instinct and impossible to reproduce.
Yet, some youngsters tune that noise out and keep practicing what inspires them.
Take Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, for instance. They have long been the blueprint for aspiring cricketers. And Shubman Gill and Dewald Brevis, their biggest admirers, seem to have unlocked that template. From cover drives to the lap shot, from the scoop to the front-foot punch, to the reverse sweep -- Gill and Brevis mirror the range of their idols with astonishing ease.
Catch Rani Rampal's inspiring story on Game On, Episode 4. Watch Here!
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I had kept a real lid on the fact that I was taking a sabbatical from acting. When I started my job at the White House, it became a news story that I naively didn't think was going to be big. So this barber was like 'Oh my gosh, you're Kal Penn' and started having a conversation about the White House. He said, 'I'm not just a barber. I also own a Tapas bar… you should bring your whole office.' I was like, 'The Office of Public Engagement? We're not allowed to accept free drinks or anything.' He goes, 'No, no, but you should just come. I'll hook it up.' He goes, 'How many people in your office?' And I'm like, 'Like 40 people.' And he jokingly said, 'You should bring the Obamas.' I said, 'Well, I'll see what I can do', knowing full well that I'm not going to invite the president out for a staff drinks at a tapas bar. And then he gives me his card — Ronald's topless ladies — and I was like 'Oh, I thought tapas like little finger food, not topless.' Because I was new at the job, I had to tell our ethics officer that I just want to make sure in case this ever becomes a news story that I did not in fact almost take anybody to a strip club or a topless bar. The opposite in fact. So I'm disclosing this to you. Your view on Elon Musk. Genius first opportunist second or opportunist first genius second? Don't they all go hand in hand? Not just with Elon Musk. But when you get to a certain level, it's all intermixed. Isn't that the case for any of us? Of course, a guy like Elon Musk has way more power. But I feel like a lot of us are like, 'Oh, this choice that I make will have no impact.' When in reality, especially in a capitalist society, any choice we make has some impact. If you had to watch one episode from the new Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, which would you pick? One of the ways I started learning Hindi was through episodes of Saath Nibhaana Saathiya… the level of Hindi is accessible and they have super addictive ridiculous plot lines… so I have to go with a bahu-saas story. The one thing you learned from Irrfan Khan (The Namesake). The power of communicating through silence. He would do this throughout a lot of his scenes, but there are two in particular that I remember. There's one where he comes into my room to give a copy of the Nikolai Gogol collection of short stories. He just uses silence to convey so much of what his character is thinking and doing. He did something similar in a scene where he tells Gogol about the origin of his name. And there's very little dialogue in both. Zoya Akhtar, Karan Johar or Mira Nair. Your pick for your next film. And it's the lead character. I love them all. I want to work with all of them. I already worked with Mira. I would love to work with her again. I have to pick one? It's the lead character? Then whoever pays me more. I am a Gujju after all. **** Amish Tripathi Author American Indians are perhaps the most successful community in the United States, in every way, except the entertainment industry. Why? It is just slower because the immigration pattern to the US was not based in the arts. So it lags a little bit. But if you look at leadership in arts professions now versus 10 or 20 years ago, it is leaps and bounds better than it was before. You have so many people running a lot of companies. Everyone talks about Bella Bajaria (Chief Content Officer) who essentially runs Netflix. .. stuff that Mindy Kaling and Priyanka (Chopra) are doing, things that I do with my companies, trying to finance projects and voices. We are not all at the same levels and sometimes things fluctuate. Priyanka Sinha Jha Curator of Screen Awards Will Harold and Kumar ever be coming to Mumbai? which aspect of the Indian way of life do you think can be featured in the fifth edition? The fourth film, we are hoping to make. They have a deal with the writers. They don't have one yet with the cast but hopefully they will work all that out with the teams and we would love to do a fourth movie. In terms of coming to Mumbai, hypothetically, if there was a film awards programme that they were invited to, maybe they would show up. There's another edition of Don coming out. Would you ever be a part of it? It is one of your favourite movies. It is. And I'll throw this out there. I had dinner with Arjun Bhasin who is the costume designer on the film, and Zoya (Akhtar). As a massive fan of the franchise, I am so excited to see that. And if there was a cameo, I would not say no. In that, I would be very cheap. I'd be like, 'Yes, I am going to come to do it. What is your lowest rate?' I am a big fan. Deepak Sethi Founder and CEO, Solutions QED You said the Democrats got their messaging wrong. How easy would it have been for a Democrat campaign to change to the right kind of tonality given that they have a basic position? The democrats also got their policies wrong. Republicans have always been good at cohesive party structure. Democrats have generally been a large tent… you've got conservative Democrats and a handful of progressive ones. They took the bait on fake wokeism, things that the Republicans were trying to drum up and take air away from real conversations like affordability or climate crises. I don't think Democrats had a plan for these. Of course, Republicans have been more aggressive on things like attacking free speech, but Biden and Harris were no friend of free speech on college campuses. They were quite similar to what you saw in the beginning with Trump. That's obviously evolved quite a bit in a way that didn't exist in the previous administration. But if you give a little, it opens up the door to further regression that I would love to not see. You have so many candidates in leadership positions on the left who are offering solutions. I am still hopeful that we learn from that. I just don't know the degree to which that'll happen.
