AB de Villiers

Net Worth

$21,000,000

Born in (City)

Bela-Bela

Born in (Country)

South Africa

Date of Birth

17th December, 1984

Date of Death

Mother

Millie de Villiers

Father

Abraham B de Villiers

Children

Abraham de Villiers
John Richard de Villiers
Yente de Villiers

About

Mr.360 began his international career as a wicket-keeper-batsman, but he has played most often solely as a batsman. He batted at various positions in the batting order, but predominantly in the middle-order. Noted as one of the most innovative and destructive batsmen in the modern era, as well as one of the greatest of all time, de Villiers is known for a range of unorthodox shots, particularly behind the wicket-keeper. He made his international debut in a Test match against England in 2004 and first played a One Day International (ODI) in early 2005. His debut in Twenty20 International cricket came in 2006. He scored over 8,000 runs in both Test and ODI cricket and is one of the very few batsmen to have a batting average of over fifty in both forms of the game. In limited-overs cricket, he is an attacking player. He holds the record for the fastest ODI century in just 31 balls. He also recorded the fastest ODI 50 and 150. He has a healthy average of 63.52 in World Cups.

Early Life

Born in Warmbad, South Africa on the 17th of February, 1984. He studied at Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool in Pretoria along with teammate Faf du Plessis. Although being a doctor himself who had played rugby union in his youth, his father encouraged ADB to concentrate on sports from his childhood and he excelled in almost all of those he laid his hands on. He and his pal Faf played for the school’s cricket team when they were 15. With his promising games in the U19 level, he started his club career playing for Titans. He played his first test match in 2004 when he was 20 years old against England at Port Elizabeth. In a three match he played at different positions. He impressed after he opened an innings in the first test and was dropped to the middle order in the second test where he scored a match saving fifty coming in at 7 but then again was pushed up into the top order and he delivered irrespective of the shifts. In the tour of Australia in 2005, He became the second-youngest and second-fastest South African to reach 1,000 Test runs. He has been a promising player in all aspects , be it his batting or his fielding and even with the gloves behind the wicket. He was often compared to the great Jhonty Rhodes when it comes to fielding and Jhonty himself mentioned that he was disappointed everytime De Villiers wore the keeper gloves, because he wanted him in the field. 2007 world cup was a roller coaster ride for ABD. Although he scored a 92 against Australia in the first round and scoring his debut hundred against West indies in a group 8 stage match, he failed to score in 4 instances including a duck against Netherlands.

Road to Success

With just 4 years of international experience, he became the first South African player to score a double century against India in a test, in 2008. And an obdurate 174 against England which gave South Africa a ten-wicket win in Leeds and his 97 in the next match brought the world concentrating on De Villiers. For his performances in 2009 and 2010, he was named in the WORLD TEST XI in both 2009 and 2010 and the WORLD ODI XI in 2010. After scoring two back-to-back centuries in the 2011 world cup, he became the first South African to score two centuries in a single World Cup tournament. AB de Villiers’ strike rate of 136.73 is the highest among South African batsmen who have scored centuries in World Cup matches. He joined Kallis on the list of South African players with most MOM (Man of Match) awards in World Cups only second to Lance Klusener who had five of them. 2015 is a year of records for ABD. He scored his and the world’s fastest ODI half-century and century against WI in a game where he scored 50 in 16 balls and 100 in just 31 balls before going on to score 149 in 44 deliveries which is still intact and will stay the same way for a long time even in these T20 times. He later scored 162 off 66 deliveries which is the fastest ODI 150, again against WI in a Pool B game in the world cup. SA reached the semis before losing to New Zealand in a rain-affected semi-final match. He was the third-highest run-getter of the tournament and was named in the "Team of the tournament" by the ICC. And there were other extremes that he had reached in the same year, 2015. Against India, he scored 45 off 297 balls in an attempt to save a test match. He did quite a similar thing in 2012 against Australia(33 runs in 220 balls) with his fellow school friend and co-player FAF Du Plessis, who have saved the test match with just 6 wickets in hand for the final day. De Villiers is a man of unique abilities who could hit an unorthodox shot for a 90 meter six behind wicket-keeper and a player who can stick to the conventional game of cricket when it comes to saving a test match. When it comes to the list of most entertaining players, I would name ABD on the top even with the ever-entertaining players of West Indian in the list.

Challenges

All his obstacles were his injuries which started from his debut ODI century in 2007. He scored 146 from just 130 balls but he had to bat with a runner for the latter stages of his innings and found every shot painful due to a combination of cramps, heat exhaustion, and dehydration. He was away from a lot of international matches in the latter part of his career, especially in 2017 due to a lot of injuries. He couldn’t keep the wickets unless extremely necessary as his back didn’t support the pressure. He couldn’t get that tagline’Chokers' from the South African team. He couldn’t get his team to cross the line of winning a world cup either as a captain or as a player. And finally, the whole world felt that he still had a lot of cricket in him for the world to witness but he said that he was tired. We just don’t know whether he was tired physically or mentally with that loss of the semi-final of the 2015 World Cup.

Failures

Though the failure percentage of this man was much lesser than his success rate, his failures have to do a lot with his injuries more than with his form. Later part of his career, he couldn't maintain the scorecard he had earlier. He retired from international cricket in early's 2018. None had the idea whether he was tired physically or mentally with that loss of the semi-final of the 2015 World Cup. On a recent press meet in 2021, he said, "You always know that it's possible that you are going to fail. Fear of failure always pushes me to focus more on the ball and do basics better. Try and get a start. It is important to start the first 20 balls well,"

Achievements

Quotes

You live for those pressure moments. Through an international career, you have ups and downs, but you always feel you are going to be tested in moments like that. It has taken me years to feel comfortable and to feel like I have good composure in those situations.
I accept that it is not always moonshine and roses, and you can't expect things must always go your way.
You've got to be able to work hard. There must be inner drive that you want to be the best in the world at what you do.