Record-Breaker & Record-Maker

Onwards to Cairns, Barrier Reef town

Record individual scores in T20 cricket often owe as much to the ball-frugality of the non-striker as the power-hitting of the batter piling on the boundaries. Sometimes an element of selfishness is also required, like when Aaron Finch took a single off the last ball of the over three times in the closing stages of his Australian record 172 from a whopping 76 balls against Zimbabwe in 2018.

But on Tuesday night at the wonderful Marrara Stadium in Darwin record thoughts were nowhere near the mind of Dewald Brevis. He didn’t know what the SA record was before the game and still didn’t know whose record he’d broken afterwards. But one man clearly did sense that something very special was happening.

Brevis moved from 14* from 12 balls to 102* off 41 in the company of Tristan Stubbs who faced only five deliveries while the record-breaker breezed from 50 to 100. There was nothing accidental about it. Stubbs took singles off each of those five balls, conscious that attempting to hit a boundary himself might result in a dot-ball thereby denying Brevis another chance to whack another boundary down the ground.

“Yeah, I'm extremely grateful, Stubbo played it very well. He's a boundary hitter as well, he's a great player. So, he could have easily have taken the strike as well and he's been on this level a lot longer, and he's got the experience,” Brevis said afterwards. So, I think he really identified the moment, and he helped me. It's not you alone out there, it's your partner that helps. If he dotted up, or if he got boundaries, then I would have been at the other end. So, basically, it’s thanks to Stubbo and I'm excited to see what he's got in him over the next few matches,” Brevis said.

Brevis was the record-breaker but his partner deserves a credit as an assistant record-maker.

The teams arrived in Cairns on Wednesday afternoon on a flight via Townsville, happily avoiding the direct flight from Darwin at 6:15am which required a 4:40am wake-up call barely three hours after getting to sleep after the game. At least the sun-rise was impressive and there was time for several Qantas coffees on the two-hour flight.

Cairns is in the far north of Queensland which is the heart of Rugby League territory in this country. There were four pages of the sport and three more on AFL at the back of the Brisbane Courier Mail before the cricket finally merited a short mention. It is the height of the Aussie Rules season and, although the Proteas’ presence here has not gone entirely unnoticed, it is usually prefaced by jokes about ‘cricket in winter.’

The Cazaly Stadium here in Cairns is named after an Aussie Rules Legend of 100 years ago, Roy Cazaly, who played for St Kilda and South Melbourne. The desperate ‘expats’ from the southern states who moved north played at the Cairns Oval before the stadium was built and had to be careful collecting the ball when goals were kicked at one end as it borders a crocodile infested swamp. The swamp remains to this day, as do the crocodiles.

This ‘Top End Tour’ has drawn two capacity crowds in Darwin with another expected on Saturday for the deciding T20I. The ODIs, one here and the final two in Mackay, may be less well-attended but Cricket Australia has its attention on a slightly bigger series which starts in less than 50 days’ time which will attract around a million spectators. The Ashes.

“Ticket allocations are exhausted for days one-to-three of the Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney Tests as well as day one of the Perth and Melbourne Tests – with other days selling fast,” gushed a CA press statement. The Perth Stadium and the MCG hold 60,000 and 95,000 respectively, in case you’re wondering why they’ve only managed to sell-out the first day!

Comic book folklore may portray Australia as a heathen nation but that’s just silly. It is, actually, as religiously diverse as it’s cosmopolitan population although religious platforms for spreading the word tend to be understated. Brevis certainly piqued some interest with his by now familiar dedication of his success to a higher force:

“When I reached that century, the most important thing for me was it wasn't me. It's all God. I give it all to him, all the glory, and he blessed me with a talent to play like that. That's the first person who I gave all the glory to.”