Exclusive: South Africa’s Young Batting Prodigies Brevis and Pretorius Join Hampshire Hawks for T20 Blast

Hampshire Hawks' newest additions for the upcoming T20 Blast, South Africa's youngest batting Prodigies Dewald Brevis and Lhuan-dre Pretorius, will be relying on their friendship as they attempt to conquer the UK.  

Background: Brevis and Pretorius

Two of South Africa's young batting prodigies, the 21-year-old Dewald Brevis and 19-year-old Lhuan-dre Pretorius, have taken the world by storm.

Brevis' record-breaking 2022 Under-19 World Cup returns, in which he scored two centuries and three half-centuries for a tally of 506 tournament runs, took him to the Mumbai Indians in the India Premier League in the same year where the youngster played seven matches under captain Rohit Sharma.

Brevis has since gone on to play two T20Is for South Africa and has made a big impact for the Titans in domestic cricket across all formats.

His Titans teammate, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, has been on a similar trajectory, having impressed for South Africa at the under-19 level before going on to dominate some of the world's best T20 bowlers in the SA20 earlier this year.

For the Titans, Pretorius has scored four centuries already, two in First-Class cricket and two in List-A cricket, and has done all this in his first season as a professional cricketer, having finished high school last year.

Both Pretorius and Brevis have signed up for the Hampshire Hawks for the T20 Blast, which is set to get underway next month.

South African-born Hampshire Hawks coach, Adrian Birrell, who also coaches the Sunrisers Eastern Cape in the SA20, has decided to rope the two youngsters into his squad for the season, understanding just how outstanding they are at a very young age.

Friendship & learning from each other

While the T20 Blast will be Pretorius' first tournament outside of South Africa, it won't be anything new for Brevis, who has played all around the world.

This is the kind of experience that Pretorius has taken advantage of, as Brevis is his teammate in domestic cricket here in South Africa and will now be his teammate in the T20 Blast.

In an exclusive interview, Pretorius told SportsBoom he continues to learn from Brevis' experiences, having had a rapid rise in professional cricket.

"Dewald Brevis was in my shoes so long ago. I've been speaking to him. He's obviously experienced a lot of things at a very young age as well. So he's a good teammate to have and a good friend to have. So I speak a lot to him about certain stuff and I just try to sponge of him and learn from his lessons," Pretorius told SportsBoom.com. 

"Actually, we became very good mates, and he's a good person to speak to because we're around the same age. He's a bit older than me, but he's experienced everything, basically all the leagues around the world and he's had a taste of international cricket as well."

"So you can, you speak to him about stuff and lessons he's learned, and then you don't want to make the same mistake. Not that he has made mistakes, but he warns you about certain things. If we go to lunch, we don't speak about much about anything else, we just basically speak about cricket."

"We both have the same intentions and the same goal. So it's really good to be able to have someone like that you can speak to, not feeling that you talk about cricket all the time because we're very similar."

What do they bring to the T20 Blast?

Having played his debut season for the Paarl Royals in the SA20, Pretorius has scored 397 runs at an average of 33 and has recorded an impressive strike rate of 166.81 while opening the batting alongside former England captain Joe Root. The 19-year-old will bring his talent to the T20 Blast next month.

On the other hand, Brevis brings experience, having played in the Indian Premier League, the MLC and the Caribbean League, along with an impressive career strike-rate of 144.