AB de Villiers | King Cricket

The cult of digging in: The almost impossible psychological trick the batsman must pull off when you want him to play a rearguard

4 minute readDo you know the only way you can successfully ‘dig in’ as a batsman? Completely and utterly mindlessly. Any other approach is far too much mental hard work and means you’ll make a bad decision sooner rather than later. We wrote a long thing for the Nightwatchman, Wisden’s quarterly publication,

June 4, 2020 Australia / Features / South Africa

Breaking down David Warner and Nathan Lyon’s run-out of AB de Villiers – one of the most disrespectful dismissals in history

4 minute readMany things happened during Australia’s win in the first Test of their ill-fated 2018 tour of South Africa. Some of them were cricket, some of them were David Warner falling out with people. The thing that interests us the most – AB de Villiers’ second innings run-out – fell somewhere

December 17, 2019 Extras

AB de Villiers Retirement Watch, emails and answers | Mop-up of the day

2 minute read

June 7, 2019 South Africa

You can’t blame AB de Villiers for his breath-takingly egocentric last minute bid to play in the World Cup – he’s just continuing to explore what’s possible in cricket

2 minute read

May 23, 2018 South Africa

AB de Villiers finally picks a cake

< 1 minute readAB de Villiers spent rather a long time desperately trying to engineer a cake monopoly. He wanted to retain and eat The Cake of International Cricket; he wanted to retain and eat The Lucrative Cake of T20 Franchise Cricket; and he also wanted to retain and eat The Cake of

March 12, 2018 Australia / Features / South Africa

When and where is AB de Villiers at his best?

2 minute readAB de Villiers is very good. We’re pretty sure most of you will agree with that insightful assessment. But where do we see him at his best? We can think of five immediately obvious environments in which AB de Villiers might be seen. In a music video Just sort of

June 21, 2017 England / South Africa

AB de Villiers plays decisive innings to win first T20 for England

2 minute readA real man of the match performance from AB de Villiers won England the first T20 international against South Africa. The greatest sportsman who ever lived ate up 58 balls in making an unbeaten 65. If the innings hinted at a two-paced pitch, England’s batsmen only noticed one of them

January 18, 2017 South Africa

AB de Villiers slowly coming to terms with Test retirement

< 1 minute readVery slowly. He’s not yet at a point where he’ll accept that his final Test was in January last year. Earlier this week, de Villiers made himself unavailable for selection for the upcoming Test series in New Zealand in March. Today he ruled himself out of the Test series against

December 13, 2016 South Africa

Vehement letter-C denier AB de Villiers also renounces (c)

< 1 minute readAB de Villiers has stood down as South Africa Test captain. Faf du Plessis has filled the void, much as he has been doing for quite a while now. This decision makes sense to us for two reasons. Firstly, de Villiers hardly ever plays cricket for South Africa at the