PURE STRIKING Since his retirement from international cricket in 2018, AB de Villiers played exclusively in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Photo: AFP
Image: AFP
Following the news of Proteas legend AB de Villiers returning to competitive cricket at the age of 40 on Monday, it’s worth asking did ‘Mr 360’ call time on his international cricket career too soon?
The simple answer is yes, but more on that later.
Now, De Villiers is signed up to play for the Game Changers South Africa Champions in the second edition of the World Championship of Legends (WCL).
Since his retirement from international cricket in 2018, De Villiers played exclusively in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). Though he had played his first three seasons in the IPL for Delhi Capitals, he spent the next 11 on the books of RCB and that is where he converted his international stardom to IPL legendary status.
It meant he spent a further four years playing in the IPL after he last donned a Proteas jersey.
The money he would have earned in the IPL is astronomical and subject to speculation, but at some point it would have stopped being about a paycheque. Once you have plenty, you can say things like it’s not about the money and that was certainly true for De Villiers.
The swashbuckling strokemaker played his last game for South Africa in a Test match against Australia in April 2018 - a couple months after he turned 34.
His retirement came that fateful day in 2018 with the words ‘I am tired’, as he cited his busy schedule of playing for South Africa and a full IPL calendar which had finally begun to wear him down.
Did De Villiers retire too soon for South Africa? Absolutely.
As he showed in the next few years in the IPL, he still had plenty fire left in the tank. It was, and is, simply the nature of world cricket - the big bucks are in the T20 leagues around the world and at some point older players need to cash in during the twilight of their career, in order to secure their futures.
It’s just a pity his retirement came before the 2019 Cricket World Cup, when there was no mention of the Proteas crumbling under pressure because they were woefully poor as they didn’t even make it out the group stage.
Had De Villiers played for the Proteas for a few more years, there’s no way to tell if it could have made a big difference. But we can always wonder.
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