Former South Africa and RCB batter AB de Villiers applauded Devdutt Padikkal for his stunning knock in the ongoing first Test against Sri Lanka at Galle. Padikkal, playing a game for India for the first time since November 2024, smashed a breathtaking 131* off 178 balls to help India reach a dominant 288/2 on the opening day as well and eventually finished on 167 off 230 balls as well.
Talking about this, AB de Villiers said on his YouTube channel, AB de Villiers 360, “I loved batting with him in 2020 and 2021 because he’s a left-hander. A tall bloke that plays the short ball pretty well, considering he’s from the subcontinent. He’s one of the new generation modern Indian batters who can play the short ball really well. I also enjoyed batting with him because he was so cool, calm, and collected. He was down to earth and would take my advice in and wasn’t one of those cocky players who would turn his back on me.”
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“We strategized out there in the middle, and I loved chatting to him about our next moves. We took some of the bowlers apart by rotating strike as a left-right combination. He would tell me the bowlers he wanted to attack, and I would do the same, and that’s how we completed our partnership,” he further added.
AB de Villiers also believes Team India made the right decision to play Devdutt Padikkal at No.3 over Sarfaraz Khan in the ongoing first Test against Sri Lanka as well. He had played only two Tests for India before the Galle outing, with a poor average of 30 as well. However, Padikkal came into the Test match on the back of a stuning 142* in India’s warm-up game against Sri Lanka Cricket XI as well.
“This is why I was erring towards Padikkal over Sarfaraz pre-match. Padikkal has the ability to bat for long periods of time and also attack if need be. Especially in Sri Lanka, it’s important to have an all-round specialist batter who can play spin and seam well but also bat for long periods like him. He also can pounce on the smaller moments and force the opposition captains to change things. That’s exactly what Padikkal did with his phenomenal hundred,” AB de Villiers concluded.
