Chennai: As South African youngster Dewald Brevis lit up Darwin with a 56-ball 125 not out to help the Proteas draw level in the T20 series against Australia, AB de Villiers didn’t waste too much time in coming up with a cryptic tweet. “There was such a golden opportunity for IPL teams to pick up Dewald Brevis at the auction! Missed out badly. CSK either got very lucky or maybe the biggest master stroke ever. The boy can play,” De Villiers wrote on X. CSK had one of their worst IPL seasons in 2025, but the silver lining was acquiring ‘Baby AB’, who has been a big hit in the T20 circuit across the world since then. CSK, though, didn’t have any plans of getting Brevis and it was a combination of desperation, smart thinking and “a bit of fluke” that led the five-time champions roping him in after eight games. “We had lost six of the first eight games and knew that our season was gone. And remember, we didn’t get Brevis as a replacement for a batter. He came in for medium-pacer Gurjapneet Singh,” a CSK source told TOI. Brevis had played a couple of seasons of IPL before for Mumbai Indians and got only 10 games, doing nothing spectacular. He was released by MI, a decision that they may end up regretting, but none of the franchises showed any interest in him during the auctions.
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“He had seemed a suspect against spin in the first two seasons and the data of the player didn’t suggest anything special. But with Ruturaj Gaikwad out with an injury, we were lacking firepower up top and with no chance to make the play-offs, there was scope to experiment,” the source said. Even then, Brevis was not a straight-forward choice and CSK had thought about Jonny Bairstow, who had also gone unsold in the auction. “Bairstow had experience, but by then we were ready to take a chance with young guns,” the source said. It was coach Stephen Fleming’s suggestion “to take a chance with Brevis”. MS Dhoni, too, gave his nod banking on the youth factor and the 22-year-old came in to become an immediate success, scoring 42 off 25 balls against SRH in a low-scoring match at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. He followed it up with a few sparkling innings that scuppered the progress of teams like KKR and Gujarat Titans. While Brevis has gone from strength to strength since then, culminating in the highest individual innings score by a South African in T20Is on Tuesday, the CSK management still believes he isn’t a finished product. The belief in the franchise is that the youngster is going to get better and CSK are ready to give him a long rope so that he can realize his potential and become one of their brave new faces.
