Why is Dewald Brevis Not Playing Today’s IPL 2023 Match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians?

During the fifth match of the ongoing 16th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) skipper Faf du Plessis has won the Toss and elected to field first against the Mumbai Indians (MI).

“We are going to bowl first. There’s a bit of weather around. There has been a bit of dew in the practice games too. (Four overseas players) Myself, Bracewell, Maxwell, and Topley. We have been so excited to get started to tonight,”  remarked Faf post the Toss.

MI skipper Rohit Sharma, on the other hand, has decided to play mere three overseas players in Tim David, Cameron Green, and Jofra Archer in the playing XI tonight. Apart from Green, Arshad Khan and Nehal Wadhera are also set to make their IPL debut tonight.

While Arshad is a left-arm pacer from Madhya Pradesh, Wadhera is a Southpaw batter from Punjab.

Why is Dewald Brevis Not Playing Today’s IPL 2023 Match?

Despite having a rich batting pool of overseas batters, MI have surprisingly included mere three overseas players in their line-up.

Dewald Brevis, who had been retained by MI after some impressive performances with bat last season, along with the South African hard-hitting batter Tristan Stubbs have not found their respective berths in the strong batting line-up.

“With this new rule teams are backing themselves to chase. At the end of the day you have to play good cricket to win. We know we have to bat first here. The pitch looks good, we just have to come out with positive intent. (Overseas players) Tim David, Cameron Green, Jofra Archer,” remarked Rohit after the Toss.

Perhaps anticipating the RCB batters to come hard at them during the chase tonight, neither Brevis or Stubbs have been added to the five substitute players list as well.

UPDATE: Stubbs has been picked ahead of Brevis as MI’s fourth overseas player in IPL 2023 Match 12 against Chennai Super Kings.

Aussie left-arm pacer Jason Behrendorff has been named in the substitute players list, and might act as their impact player while defending the score.

Dewald Brevis performance for MI in IPL 2022

Ending up as the leading run-scorer during the ICC Under-19 World Cup 2022, Brevis was roped in by MI during the auction and impressed everyone right away with some exceptional range of strokes and hard-hitting.

Across 7 matches last year, Brevis had scored 161 runs at an average of 23.00 for MI, while smashing 14 Fours and 11 Sixes across these innings.