Dewald Brevis is smiling again and that bodes well for Pretoria Capitals and Proteas

Dewald Brevis never refuses to acknowledge a young fan requesting an autograph. 

It goes back to when he was just a child with a beaming smile asking his heroes for a moment of their time. 

But on Monday evening at Centurion, Brevis had to decline for he had an important matter to attend to.

“I remember the little kid asked me to sign and I said, wait, I need to take a catch now. And then literally the next ball. So that was quite funny,” Brevis said. 

It was the first of two outstanding catches that swung the Betway SA20 clash in the Pretoria Capitals’ favour. 

After already contributing a crucial 34 off 19 balls during an explosive 69-run partnership off just 34 balls with Sherfane Rutherford (53 off 27 balls) to set up the Capitals’ 185/6 against MI Cape Town, he now produced a bit of magic in the field. 

The first catch to dismiss Corbin Bosch saw him running around the boundary to grab a stunner before following it up with an even better full-length dive to pick up the white ball inches away from the green turf.

“The diving one was lekker, but the other was nice too,” Brevis said. 

These superlative fielding efforts are not by chance though, as Brevis has consistently taken a bunch of “worldies” for both the Proteas and his former SA20 team MI Cape Town previously. 

He credits it to the work done behind the scenes with Proteas and MI Cape Town fielding coach Kruger van Wyk.

“Whenever I'm with the national team, we really work a lot. Coach Kruger, obviously on the opposite team, hopefully I got him smiling a tiny bit.

“He's always on it, like that extra five minutes to do something. At our team (Capitals), with our coaches and everyone, we put lots of emphasis on the fielding and that's how you create a team spirit and an amazing environment.

“But the main thing is if you're having fun and you're really enjoying it out there, then you're basically looking for the ball and you're always there to celebrate each other's success.”

It certainly was a good night out for the Capitals superstar after a couple of quiet opening weeks in the competition. 

The pressure of the record R16.5 million price tag was seemingly a heavy burden, but it looked like it was all dissolved when Brevis struck his Proteas teammate Kagiso Rabada for two audacious sixes. 

The first was a no-look flick over fine leg before taking his bottom hand off to dispatch Rabada on to the grass banks with just one hand. 

“Yeah, I'm really grateful. It's been important to remember a little kid. I actually got the bracelet.

I don't field with it. It would have probably snapped off, but he had a little message for me to keep smiling. And that's so important.

“And it's God that gave me the talent to play, but also I need to have fun out there. 

“And maybe there's a few things that happened, and maybe the smile wasn't there all the time, but it was very fun out there today. I'm really grateful that we got off to another one and that we're playing like this.”

With the Capitals moving to the top of the table after their bonus point victory over MI Cape Town, Brevis feel the Centurion-based team is peaking at the right moment.

“I think we are on a good foot. I can just see our team is really growing and we're really bonding and there's some good spirit that's forming,” he said.

“We'll take one game at a time. We're not going to look too far ahead, but we had a great place and we shouldn't, like I said, look too far ahead. We can look at the past, but stay in the moment and there's lots of good things.”