AB de Villiers plans to keep playing in the IPL for a few years
Image courtesy of: Zimbio
Former South Africa batsman AB de Villiers has confirmed that he will continue featuring in the Indian Premier League (IPL) “for a few years”.
De Villiers stunned the cricketing community when he announced his retirement from international cricket in May.
While he has bid farewell to his international career, De Villiers insisted that he will continue playing in domestic Twenty20 leagues and also wants to play for his domestic franchise, Titans.
“I will keep on playing IPL for a few years, and I would like to play for the Titans, and help some of the youngsters. But there are no set plans. I haven’t been able to say that for a long time,” De Villiers told iol.co.za. “There are some offers on the table from around the world, but it will be nice to wake up and wonder what to do; to be normal.”
De Villiers also insisted that he has made peace with the fact that he never tasted World Cup glory during his illustrious career.
“For a long time, the World Cup was a massive goal,” de Villiers said. “But, in the last few years, I have realised that it isn’t realistic to measure yourself purely on what you achieve in that tournament. That will not be the be-all and end-all of my career.
“Yes, I would have loved to win it, but I have great memories from World Cups. The 2007 tournament – my first – was very special. We fell short against Australia, when we tried to play too much cricket too soon, but that shift in mentality probably helped us to go over there and win the Test series we then won over there. Personally, I scored my first ODI century in that 2007 tournament, and I loved the whole experience of being in the Caribbean.
“The same goes for the others, in 2011 and in 2015. India has always been close to my heart, because of the passion for cricket, and then obviously 2015 was an amazing game,” he further said about the classic semi-final against New Zealand in which South Africa fell agonisingly short. “We fell on the wrong side of it, but we gave it everything.”
De Villiers added that he made the decision to retire since he didn’t want to pick and choose which series to play in ahead of the 2019 World Cup.
“I guess that once I acknowledged to myself that I didn’t have to measure my career on one tournament, place so much emphasis on it, it became easier to make my decision,” he said. “I also didn’t want to be picking and choosing my way through fixtures from now until then. It wouldn’t be fair.”