AB de Villiers request to return to the international scene for the World Cup was ‘not even considered’ by captain Faf du Plessis, coach Ottis Gibson and convener of selectors Linda Zondi.
South Africa’s World Cup campaign was thrown into further turmoil on Thursday with the sensational claims that AB de Villiers offered to come out of retirement for the World Cup, but was snubbed by team management.
The offer came 24 hours before the Proteas squad was announced, and the report states that ‘De Villiers’ request was not even considered’, by Du Plessis, Gibson and Zondi.
The rejection was based on two main reasons. Primarily, De Villiers had retired in May 2018, exactly a year before the World Cup was scheduled. Thereafter, he did not fulfill the selection criteria, which included playing South African domestic cricket or international cricket in the intervening months.
It was also felt that a recall for De Villiers would have been unfair on the players who have been performing in his absence.
SA Cricket Magazine understands that there had been whispers in cricket’s corridors for a few weeks that De Villiers had made himself available to return to the Proteas, and that the 30-year-old had ‘fallen out’ with his close friend from Affies school days, captain Faf du Plessis.
Defeat by six wickets against India at the Rose Bowl on Wednesday was South Africa’s third successive loss at the World Cup and left them needing to win the remaining six games of their round-robin campaign – including matches against West Indies, Australia, Pakistan and New Zealand – to have a chance of progressing to the semi-finals.
While their bowling ranks have been blunted by a hamstring injury to Lungi Ngidi and the tournament-ending shoulder injury to Dale Steyn, the Proteas batsmen have struggled with the bat. They lost their opener against England after being skittled for 207 runs, lost to Bangladesh by 21 runs after reaching 309-8 in their turn at the crease and against India struggled to 227-9 in their 50 overs, after winning the toss and electing to bat first.
At the 2019 IPL, De Villiers said on Indian TV: ‘I was keen to play in the World Cup, but I left, I retired. It was a very sensitive situation. For the last three years of my career, I was labelled as a guy who is picking and choosing when I was playing and when not. So I got quite a lot of criticism from back home, which also played a role in me retiring.
And it was difficult for me to then go, “Hey, but I’ll still play the World Cup”. It’s that picking and choosing thing again, and it’s quite arrogant to do something like that. But as they say, you can’t have your bread buttered on both sides.’
De Villiers played the last of his 228 ODIs for the Proteas against India at Centurion in February 2018 and cited ‘tiredness’ as his reason for retiring, with a batting average of 53.50, in a career which yielded 25 ODI hundreds.
