The South African star cricketer AB de Villiers has arguably been one of the legendary cricketers the world has ever witnessed. He made his international debut for Proteas against Australia in the Johannesburg Test way back in 2004. Even since then, there has been no looking back for him as his stature kept on growing with each passing day. However, recently, he announced his retirement from all the formats of cricket for South Africa.
South Africa is scheduled to tour Sri Lanka for a complete series in July and de Villiers’ announcement will be a massive blow for the team ahead of their sub-continent tour. He had represented the Proteas in 114 Tests, 228 ODIs and 78 T20 and scored 8765, 9577 and 1672 runs respectively. He also has 47 international centuries to his name.
ABD scored his maiden double century in Test against India back in 2008 at Ahmedabad. In 2010, the veteran notched his highest Test score versus Pakistan when he amassed 278 runs at Abu Dhabi. He also boasts of the fastest century in ODIs against the Windies back from 31 balls in 2016 at the Wanderers. Moreover, he had been a part of three World Cups for his country in 2007, 2011 and 2015 respectively.
ALSO READ: AB de Villiers Announces retirement from International cricket
De Villiers has been suffering from injuries for quite a while. He played the four-day Day-Night Test against Zimbabwe last year, which was his comeback in Test cricket after a gap of almost two years. He played the Test series against India thereafter, but couldn’t play all the matches in the ODI series because of a finger injury.
The flamboyant cricketer recently demonstrated his skills in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) under the leadership of Virat Kohli. He churned out some match-winning knocks for his team and won some matches for them single-handedly. Following his retirement, Twitter couldn’t hold themselves back and mourned his retirement.
The Indian fans, the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) fans in particular, look concerned about the same. They had showered praises on ABD in one of the posts and had then asked AB to come back to Bengaluru. A concerned fan asked about AB’s IPL future and RCB replied with a positive response.
“@abdevilliers17 immense character lets him walk out of international cricket with grace and countless fans longing for more of his class! Come back to Bengaluru. #PlayBold,” the social media handle of Royal Challengers Bangalore wrote in a comment.
“Will he play for RCB @royalchallengersbangalore?” a fan asked back. The RCB social media handle was quick to comment back saying, “yes he will 🙂 “.
Check out the conversation here:
