South African cricketer AB de Villiers announces international retirement

Saturday, May 26, 2018

On Wednesday, South African cricketer AB de Villiers announced his retirement from international cricket. The 34-year-old batsman uploaded a video message on Twitter saying it was a "tough decision" and he was "tired".

De Villiers joined the national team, the Proteas, in 2004, featuring in a test match against England. Since then, the South African talisman has featured in 114 test matches for the Proteas, scoring 8765 runs. He has 22 test centuries to his name, the most recent one coming against Australia in March. South Africa went on to win the test series 3–0.

De Villiers' batting average is above 50 in both test matches and One Day International (ODI) matches. De Villiers has featured in 228 ODI and 78 Twenty20 (T20) matches as well scoring 9577 and 1672 runs in ODIs and T20s respectively.

In a match against the West Indies at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg on January 18, 2015, De Villiers scored 149 runs from 44 balls. In that match, De Villiers scored the fastest half-century in ODIs, reaching 50 runs from seventeen balls, as well as the fastest century in ODIs, with 100 runs from 31 balls.

Chris Nenzani, the President of Cricket South Africa, said, "AB is one of the all-time greats of South African cricket who has thrilled spectators around the world".

De Villiers announced his retirement four days after he finished his Indian Premier League season with Royal Challengers Bangalore. In the video statement, De Villiers said, "I have no plans to play overseas, in fact, I hope I can continue to be available for the Titans in domestic cricket."

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

"AB de Villiers | South Africa" — ESPN Cricinfo, May 25, 2018 (date of access)
"Records | One-Day Internationals | Batting Records | Fastest Fifties" — ESPN Cricinfo, May 25, 2018 (date of access)
"Records | One-Day Internationals | Batting Records | Fastest Hundreds" — ESPN Cricinfo, May 25, 2018 (date of access)
"AB de Villiers: South Africa batsman retires from international cricket" — BBC Sport, May 23, 2018
Firdose Moonda. "'Tired' AB de Villiers retires from international cricket" — ESPN, May 23, 2018
Firdose Moonda. "De Villiers sets breathtaking new century record" — ESPN Cricinfo, January 18, 2015

External link

AB de Villiers. "I’ve made a big decision today" — Twitter, May 23, 2018

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License