AB de Villiers Biography
Full name AB de Villiers
Born February 17, 1984, Pretoria
Current age 26 years 337 days
Playing role Wicketkeeper batsman
Batting style Right-hand bat
Bowling style Right-arm medium
Fielding position Wicketkeeper
Born February 17, 1984, Pretoria
Current age 26 years 337 days
Playing role Wicketkeeper batsman
Batting style Right-hand bat
Bowling style Right-arm medium
Fielding position Wicketkeeper
AB de Villiers Profile
A batsman of breathtaking chutzpah and enterprise, as well as the skills and the temperament required to back up his creative intent. A fielder able to leap tall buildings and still come up with the catch. A wicketkeeper who is perfectly at ease donning pads and gloves. A fine rugby player, golfer, and tennis player. All AB de Villiers needs to show off his abundant gifts is a ball. Just about any ball.
Cricket should be pleased to have him. Few drive the ball as sweetly and to the boundary as regularly, and - in South Africa, at any rate - even fewer possess the silkily snappy footwork required to put spinners in their place. de Villiers is also among the fastest and the most instinctively sensible runners between the wickets. Marry all that with an approach to life that veers between laconic and laid back, and it isn't difficult to fathom why he has been afforded senior player status in the South African team years ahead of his time.
de Villiers' potential was recognised years before he made the leap to senior international level as an opening batsman against England at Port Elizabeth in 2004-05. He has batted everywhere from number one to number eight - with the important exception of number three - and has performed well in most of these positions.
After a brief slump in form in 2006 and 2007, de Villiers returned to the straight and narrow early in 2008 with a blistering 103 not out off 109 balls in Durban against West Indies. Later that year came one of de Villiers' career highlights, an undefeated 217 at Ahmedabad. It was the first double-century by a South African against India.
South Africans do not take easily to the precociously talented, but it helps if they do not come across all precocious. Such is the case with de Villiers, whose lazy smile under an every-which-way thatch of blond hair has helped convince the nation that he's worth feeding despite all that talent. The nation is not wrong.
de Villiers adjusts to the requirements of cricket's various formats as effortlessly as someone of his ample abilities should do. So much so that he has yet to fall victim to the curse of selection disputes, a curse that has struck even as accomplished a player as Jacques Kallis. Instead, as a career that should be in its adolescence by the mere measure of time and matches arches ever upward, the only question to be asked about de Villiers is how to deploy him to maximum effect.
Fast Facts
* De Villiers reached a tally of 1000 Test runs just 364 days into his International debut, when he was 21 years old. He is the second youngest to achieve this feat and he is the second fastest South African behind Graeme Pollock (Shaun Pollock's uncle) to do so.
* His ODI average is the 3rd best for South African behind only Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis.
* He is one of only 8 South Africans to score 10 or more Test centuries.
* His tally of ODI hundreds is the 4th best for his nation.
* De Villiers is one of only 7 South Africans to get 4500+ runs in Test cricket.
* Being dismissed five times in the 90s in Tests (highest score of 98), it's the 6th most in Test history and the most for a South African.
* His 78 Test innings without scoring a duck is the most among currently active players and joint highest in Test history.
* His 58-ball hundred against India in 2010 was the 7th fastest ODI century at that time.
A batsman of breathtaking chutzpah and enterprise, as well as the skills and the temperament required to back up his creative intent. A fielder able to leap tall buildings and still come up with the catch. A wicketkeeper who is perfectly at ease donning pads and gloves. A fine rugby player, golfer, and tennis player. All AB de Villiers needs to show off his abundant gifts is a ball. Just about any ball.
Cricket should be pleased to have him. Few drive the ball as sweetly and to the boundary as regularly, and - in South Africa, at any rate - even fewer possess the silkily snappy footwork required to put spinners in their place. de Villiers is also among the fastest and the most instinctively sensible runners between the wickets. Marry all that with an approach to life that veers between laconic and laid back, and it isn't difficult to fathom why he has been afforded senior player status in the South African team years ahead of his time.
de Villiers' potential was recognised years before he made the leap to senior international level as an opening batsman against England at Port Elizabeth in 2004-05. He has batted everywhere from number one to number eight - with the important exception of number three - and has performed well in most of these positions.
After a brief slump in form in 2006 and 2007, de Villiers returned to the straight and narrow early in 2008 with a blistering 103 not out off 109 balls in Durban against West Indies. Later that year came one of de Villiers' career highlights, an undefeated 217 at Ahmedabad. It was the first double-century by a South African against India.
South Africans do not take easily to the precociously talented, but it helps if they do not come across all precocious. Such is the case with de Villiers, whose lazy smile under an every-which-way thatch of blond hair has helped convince the nation that he's worth feeding despite all that talent. The nation is not wrong.
de Villiers adjusts to the requirements of cricket's various formats as effortlessly as someone of his ample abilities should do. So much so that he has yet to fall victim to the curse of selection disputes, a curse that has struck even as accomplished a player as Jacques Kallis. Instead, as a career that should be in its adolescence by the mere measure of time and matches arches ever upward, the only question to be asked about de Villiers is how to deploy him to maximum effect.
Fast Facts
* De Villiers reached a tally of 1000 Test runs just 364 days into his International debut, when he was 21 years old. He is the second youngest to achieve this feat and he is the second fastest South African behind Graeme Pollock (Shaun Pollock's uncle) to do so.
* His ODI average is the 3rd best for South African behind only Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis.
* He is one of only 8 South Africans to score 10 or more Test centuries.
* His tally of ODI hundreds is the 4th best for his nation.
* De Villiers is one of only 7 South Africans to get 4500+ runs in Test cricket.
* Being dismissed five times in the 90s in Tests (highest score of 98), it's the 6th most in Test history and the most for a South African.
* His 78 Test innings without scoring a duck is the most among currently active players and joint highest in Test history.
* His 58-ball hundred against India in 2010 was the 7th fastest ODI century at that time.
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers - Brilliant run out
AB de Villiers Century
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