Turns out AB de Villiers is rubbish at T20 cricket

1 minute read

There’s only so many times you can hear how wonderful something is before you want to hit it with a hammer or push it down a flight of stairs at the luxury five-star hotel at which it’s staying ahead of its team’s first match at the World T20.

However, this urge should be resisted. Generally speaking, it’s not the thing itself which is so objectionable – it’s the almost mindless adulation it receives. Also, why would it be using the stairs rather than the lift? Maybe it was a schoolboy stair ascending and descending champion and wants to keep its eye in. Who knows?

Anyway, should the mindless wish to gain a mind, Cricinfo’s S Rajesh has dug out a few stats about how AB de Villiers performs in T20 internationals. Turns out he has the fifth-lowest average among top five batsmen to have scored more than 750 runs.

It’s not totally damning, but it’s a nice thing to set against all the unquestioning worship, especially considering all the talk about how he supposedly epitomises the modern game.

Maybe he does. All anyone remembers are the days when he comes off – they forget all the frenetic failures. What could be more reflective of the contemporary cricket landscape than that?

Perhaps AB de Villiers wants his cake-eating window so that he can get in a bit more practice in his weakest format.