On Tuesday, South Africa’s genius cricketer AB de Villiers trembled his fans across the world with excitement when he hinted towards his return to international cricket. And now, the Proteas captain Faf du Plessis has also shown his interest in ABD’s return.
On Wednesday, Du Plessis said that De Villiers would be welcomed back into the team ahead of the T20 World Cup scheduled to take place in Australia.
De Villiers has been in constant touch with South Africa’s head coach Mark Boucher, director of Cricket South Africa (CSA) Graeme Smith and skipper Du Plessis, about his possible return to the national team.
“We spoke about it, and I was very keen to have him back. That was even before the new coaching staff was on board. Then it was the process of what does the next year look like in terms of T20 cricket-how many games; where, when, what? And then trying to unfold that in a way that we can get him back. He’s keen to come to do that I don’t know when. I can’t give you that answer yet because that decision hasn’t been taken. But there would be a series we would like to get him back to play,” said Du Plessis.
“In an ideal world, we would like to try and make sure that we can play our best 11, 12, 13 players for a few games or series together leading up to the T20 World Cup,” added Du Plessis.
“A learning curve for me with the 50-over World Cup last year was that we never had the combinations we were looking for. As a new coach Ottis Gibson didn’t know a lot of the players. There was a search for a lot of players and finding combinations. If I could do that over again, I would try and settle into the combinations a little earlier so the guys can play as many games as possible together,” Du Plessis added further.
‘Mr 360’ retired from international cricket in 2018 and is currently playing for Brisbane Heat in Big Bash League (BBL). In his first match against Adelaide Strikers, De Villiers scored 40 runs off 32 balls.
South Africa will play 11 T20I games against England and Australia in February, and West Indies in August before their first match against India in the showpiece event.
