Turnaround complete as wooden spoonists from 2023 and 2024 rise up to topple double champions
Firdose Moonda08-Feb-2025Mumbai Indians Cape Town said that things had changed from the first two seasons of the SA20, but now we know by how much. After finishing at the bottom of the points table in seasons one and two, MICT are season three’s champions, and the first team other than beaten opposition Sunrisers Eastern Cape to win the title.Theirs was a campaign of near-total dominance, with seven group stage wins out of 10, qualification to the final at the first attempt in the play-offs and key performances from big players throughout. However, what stood out was the extent to which their South African players took centre stage. They often only fielded two internationals in captain Rashid Khan and Trent Boult, while in the final they had five players who play their domestic cricket for the provincial side based at the Wanderers, the Lions. The advantage of that hyper-local knowledge, especially in a final, is obvious, particularly when it comes to batting.Run-scoring has been difficult throughout this competition and though MICT was the one side we knew could bat, now we know how deep. Rassie van der Dussen and Ryan Rickelton proved themselves to be the premier opening partnership of the competition, while MICT’s Nos 1-3 contributed more than 1000 runs across their eight matches. However, on this rare occasion, despite another half-century stand to launch the innings, their efforts were eclipsed by Nos.4-7. Between them, Connor Esterhuizen, George Linde, Dewald Brevis and Delano Potgieter scored 110 runs, their best combined return for those positions this season. Ryan Rickelton gave MI Cape Town another rapid start•SA20And so to Brevis, whose potential from the 2022 Under-19 World Cup, where he finished as the leading run-scorer, is being fulfilled. He came in after 11 overs – having being held back so that MICT could stick to their left-hand, right-hand obsession – with the innings needing some impetus. MICT were 93 for 4 and the most consistent batters had all been dismissed. Richard Gleeson bowled the 12th over and conceded only four runs and then the first four balls of Liam Dawson’s final over brought only four singles. Something had to happen.So off the next ball, Brevis cleared his front foot, got under the length and slammed Dawson over long-on for six. The ball after that, he made room and hit him over long-off for six more. And the next ball he faced, from Andile Simelane, he smoked over long-on again for a third successive six. Just like that, MICT were 121 for 5 in the 14th over and 180 was in their sights.If Brevis had kept going to the end, they might have even had eyes on 200. His fourth and final six was off Craig Overton and was an absolute spekkie, as they say. Brevis picked the slower ball early, took the bottom hand off the bat and managed to launch Overton over square leg with a shot that was all power and placement. It was also his 25th six of the tournament, the most by an individual batter at this year’s SA20 and the third-most in any edition of the tournament. This season, Brevis’s balls per boundary of 3.75 was only bettered by his team-mate Rickelton. Indeed, his coming-of-age is also best expressed in the numbers and they show that he has never had a better tournament average or strike-rate, and has only once scored more runs.All of that is the cricket speaking but, on the boundary and beyond it, we’ve also seen a different side to Brevis. It’s in this tournament that he showed off his incredible catching skills, parrying the ball back into the field of play to dismiss Faf du Plessis in a league game at the Wanderers, and having safe hands everywhere else around the country. Also in this tournament, he seems to have shed the “Baby AB” tag that he so revelled in as a younger man and found his own voice, speaking with clarity and assurance whenever he has been interviewed. Brevis might remind himself, and many of us, of his hero AB de Villiers but he is learning to be his own man, which is one of the things that those close to him felt was necessary for him to make the step up.Related
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Now, he has also done something that sets him apart from de Villiers, by both being part of a team that has won a franchise T20 tournament and playing a key role in it. Overall, Brevis finished as the sixth-highest run-scorer of this SA20 with a better strike-rate than anyone else in the top 10. While MICT’s win will be remembered for the big names: van der Dussen and Rickelton’s opening stands, Boult’s squeeze when it mattered most (he conceded only nine runs in four overs and became the second-most economical bowler in a tournament final) and Rashid Khan’s leadership, it should also be about the development of Brevis’s game.MICT put an emphasis on the scaffolding of their structure, surrounding Rashid with experienced local players who could help the only foreign captain in the tournament navigate South African challenges, and on their squad reserves. They were able to empty their bench in their last league game, for example, because they’d already qualified for the final and in so doing gave someone like Esterhuizen an experience he could draw on when he was asked to come into the XI for the final. That’s one instance of MICT working on longer-term plans, but there have been others.In an interview with ESPNcricinfo, Rickelton spoke about an MI-specific camp that was held in the UK in 2023, where everyone involved in the franchise was present. “I had a full MI group of coaches that sat me down and said, ‘this is how we want you to play, and this is the plan. I never really had a plan on T20 cricket until that camp,” he said. “It definitely laid the platform for where I sit right now.”The end result is plain. Whereas from season one onwards, we all knew how well-resourced MICT would be, as they signed some of the biggest names in the game from Jofra Archer and Kieron Pollard to Rashid and Ben Stokes, now we know what those less-heralded components can do too.