Cape Town, South Africa: AB de Villiers, who announced his retirement from cricket on Friday, will be remembered as one of the sport’s great entertainers and one of the finest players to represent South Africa.
De Villiers was an outstanding batsman in all forms of international cricket, averaging more than 50 in both 118 Test matches and 228 one-day internationals.
He scored at better than a run a ball in one-day internationals and had a strike rate of 135.16 in 78 Twenty20 internationals.
In T20 cricket, he was one of the most popular and successful players in the Indian Premier League.
He earned the nickname “Mr 360” for his ability to play shots to all parts of the ground, an ability never better illustrated than when he scored a century off 31 balls against the West Indies in Johannesburg in 2014/15. It remains the fastest hundred in one-day internationals.
But De Villiers could also adapt his game to play long defensive innings.
He made 33 off 220 balls without a boundary in helping former schoolmate Faf du Plessis save a Test against Australia in 2012/13 and eked out 43 over almost six hours and 297 balls against India’s dominant spin bowlers in Delhi in 2015/16.
