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Former South Africa captain AB de Villiers is considered one of the most destructive players in the game’s history. De Villiers stunned the cricket world when he announced his international retirement in 2018 ahead of the ODI World Cup 2019 in England. He continued to play franchise cricket and turned out for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the Indian Premier League (IPL). While there were speculations around his international retirement, he did not make a U-turn. De Villiers revealed that he played for a couple of years towards the end of his career with a detached retina.
“My youngster accidentally kicked me on my eye with his heel. I started really losing vision in the right eye,” the Proteas batter told Wisden Cricket Monthly.
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“When I got the surgery done the doctor actually asked me, ‘How in the world did you play cricket like this?’. Luckily my left eye did a decent job for the last two years of my career.”
The 39-year-old also revealed why he chose not to roll back his retirement.
“Covid certainly played a role, there’s no doubt about it. From an international perspective, that 2015 World Cup hurt big time. It took me a while to get over that and then, when I got back into the side and I was ready to commit, I didn’t feel the same culture that I really needed at that time,” he explained.
“I often found myself thinking, I don’t know, eh? Could this be the end of my career? I didn’t even really want to play IPL or anything else. I got away from everything in 2018 and then decided to push one more time with a bit of Test cricket, to try and beat India and Australia over here, and then I’ll call it. I didn’t want any spotlight on me. I just wanted to say, ‘I had a great time, thank you very much’.”
In 2022, De Villiers underwent eye surgery and announced that he can't play cricket anymore.
De Villiers made his last IPL appearance in 2021, the same edition when Virat Kohli announced he will leave the captaincy role at the franchise. He is still the second-highest overseas run-scorer in IPL history.
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