da poker： Seamer Codi Yusuf will also be playing his first Test when South Africa face Zimbabwe in Bulawayo on Saturday
da betsson： Firdose Moonda27-Jun-2025At 22 years old, Dewald Brevis has already experienced the highs of being in the spotlight as a burgeoning superstar, the lows of being labelled not good enough, and the feeling that comes with a fresh start.Brevis was relatively fresh off the 2022 Under-19 World Cup, where he was the leading run-scorer and Shukri Conrad was the coach, when he was picked in South Africa’s T20I squad for a series against Australia in 2023. It was seen as the fast-tracking of a prodigious talent, who may even have parachuted into that year’s ODI World Cup squad. But Brevis was dismissed playing aggressive shots for scores of 5 and 0 in the first two matches against Australia and was dropped for the third game. That was the end of the experiment, and Brevis was not considered for the national side again, until now.”That moment being there, and then being left out for a few years, that was quite tough. But I was young as well,” Brevis said from Bulawayo, where he is set to make his Test debut against Zimbabwe on Saturday. “I’m grateful for how I handled that, and the people I had around me. It made me much more hungry for the game and to perform. I knew what I had to do and I put in the work and I kept believing.Related
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“To be able to return and it being in the Test side, that’s very special. For me, it’s the pinnacle format. You can play all the leagues, you can play T20 and 50-over cricket, but there’s something about Test cricket. That’s really the ultimate.”One of the ways Brevis dealt with things was by accepting that he would have to do the hard yards in the domestic system, away from the glare of expectation. Since 2023-24, in two seasons of the first-class competition, Brevis averaged over 44, quietly collected four hundreds, and proved himself patient enough to play the long game – literally and figuratively.At the same time, Brevis has also shown what he is capable of in the shorter formats – emphatically. He smashed 162 off 57 balls in a T20 against Knights in 2022. He was the third-highest run-scorer in the One-day Challenge in 2023-24, and the second-highest in 2024-25. He was the title-winning finisher at the SA20 earlier this year, scored two fifties in six innings at the IPL, and also got a deal with Hampshire for the T20 Blast.Now Brevis hopes to combine what he has learnt on the largely forgotten fields of the first-class game and the spotlight of T20 leagues to make good the potential he showed three years ago, also under Conrad.”I just want to be the same guy that plays all formats. I’m not really trying to make any big changes,” he said. “It’s all about watching the ball and just being true to myself. The key fact is we all know you have to bat longer. In order to bat longer, you have to take it ball by ball and not change the way you play a ball. So I’m not going to change anything.”Brevis will debut alongside Lhuan-dre Pretorius, another prodigy who was South Africa’s leading run-scorer at the 2024 Under-19 World Cup, and Codi Yusuf, who is at the other end of the spectrum. At 27, Yusuf could be considered a late bloomer who started as a batter and then started bowling spin, until a net session changed his mind.”In high school, one of the guys hit me out of the nets,” he said. “I went to fetch the ball, and I said, ‘Guys, I’m gonna run in and just bowl pace.’ I ran in, bowled pace and hit the guy. I was like, ‘I’m not going to bowl another ball of spin from this day onwards’, and that’s how it happened.”This county season, Codi Yusuf took 17 wickets at 20.94 in four matches for Durham•Getty Images
Yusuf’s career meandered through the semi-professional ranks at Mpumalanga before he moved to Lions. Over the last two seasons, he has been their leading seamer in the first-class competition. Yusuf finished ninth on the wicket-takers’ list in 2023-24 and joint-fifth last summer, along with Lutho Sipamla. The benefits of working with bowling coach Allan Donald were clear to see.”He doesn’t do a lot of technical stuff with me, but he definitely helps the way I think about the game and approach it,” Yusuf said. “This past season, I’ve taken on a little bit more of a leading role. I play with my heart, and try to work as hard as I can and be ready for the opportunity when it comes.”In the last few months, several opportunities have come for Yusuf. He enjoyed a stint in first-class cricket for Durham, for whom he took 17 wickets in four matches at 20.94. “Bowling with the Dukes ball in English conditions is quite different to bowling in South Africa,” he said. “I took a lot of learnings out of that.”He also met one of his heroes, Ben Stokes and, by coincidence, will wear the same number as him – 55 – on his national shirt. “I just gave a few numbers, and I’m quite happy it’s 55,” he said. “I look up to Ben Stokes, and I see he’s number 55 as well. So I’m happy about that.”
