Cape Town — South Africa's cricket future was on display in full high-colour definition on Monday in Gqeberha.
Dewald Brevis, Tristan Stubbs and CP Klijnhans lit up a gloomy St George's Park with exhilarating batting displays for the Titans, Warriors and Knights respectively.
Brevis, of course, has been the rage ever since the supremely talented 18-year-old broke the record for the most runs ever at the ICC U-19 World Cup earlier this month.
It was those exhilarating displays in the Caribbean that earned the teenager a R6 million IPL contract with the Mumbai Indians before he had actually completed playing his very first senior professional game for the Titans this past weekend.
And "Baby AB" — as he has been dubbed due to his similar style to Proteas legend AB de Villiers — showed on Monday morning that he will be full value for it with a brisk 46 not out off 30 balls to ease the Titans to a seven-wicket victory over a Proteas-laden Dolphins team.
Stubbs, meanwhile, may not yet have joined the IPL millionaires club, but it is abundantly clear that Gqeberha will be too small for the former Grey High School prodigy very soon.
In fact, St George's Park is already with Stubbs pummelling yet another blitzkrieg 65 off 35 balls (3x4,5x6) against the Knights. It was the 21-year-old's third half-century in just four innings, which propelled him to the top of the competition's run-scorers list with 217 runs at an average of 72.33 and strike-rate of 208.65.
Stubbs has certainly shown that he possesses immense power having cleared the fence 19 times already — nine times more than second-placed David Miller, who also showed he is not ready to replaced by these young upstarts just yet with an undefeated 57 off 40 balls.
Unfortunately for the Warriors, Stubbs' pyrotechnics was not enough as the home team's bowling unit was absolutely blown away by Jacques Snyman and another promising young batter Klijnhans.
Snyman bashed 90 off 52 balls — the highest score of the tournament thus far — in a record opening stand of 156 with debutant Klijnhans. The 22-year-old certainly fed off his batting partner to stroke a delightful 67 off 54 balls to propel the Knights to their first victory of the competition.
IOL Sport