Faf du Plessis and AB de Villiers know each other since childhood and their friendship bond is very visible in the cricketing field as well. They both studied in the very same school and started their cricket journey from there on.

The fate wrote something special for both of them after those golden years in the school as both went to lead their national side let alone representing the country. De Villiers came at the international arena in 2005 but it took a long while for Faf to crack into the protea’s team.

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There are several tales about both of these players, but their childhood coach highlighted few other things as well. Deon Botes, their childhood sports teacher, revealed that both of them were very naughty and used to play pranks with their friends.

Deon revealed to CricketNext that Du Plessis was very serious about the sport and quoted “One fine day, Faf comes up to me and says that he cannot come for training because his kit bag was in his room and he couldn’t find the key. Being the naughty boy that he was, I was sure he didn’t feel like training. So I told him that he had to come for training and I didn’t care how.”

“So, as expected, I see Faf right there with the rest of the boys. After training, I walk up to him and ask him how he got the keys to which he said he didn’t. So, I enquired about the kit bag and he said he broke in through the window. I was like but Faf you cannot do that and he is like, ‘But sir, you only said I had to be on the ground at any cost.’ Now, what can you say to this? It shows that he was just as serious about the game as he was a rule-breaker,” he added.

De Villiers is the name of fear for any bowler but during his schooling days, he got expelled. “A new trend had started where the kids would speak to one another on the radio. So now, AB was trying to talk to one of the students in the girl’s school down the road and as luck would have it, one of the parents was walking down from that place at the same time and the matter was immediately brought up and AB had to be expelled for this,” the sports teacher noted.

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Before turning into a classic middle-order batsman, Faf was a leg-spinner and coach revealed the same while saying “When Faf came into the school team, he was a leg-spinner who also batted. We really thought we would see him bowl more often, but as he rose up the ranks, batting became a priority. As for AB, he was a wicket-keeper who batted at number 8 to start with. It was much later that he started batting up the order.”