South Africa’s limited-overs captain Quinton de Kock has confirmed the AB de Villiers was definitely in the scheme of things to play for the T20 World Cup later this year in Australia. De Villiers, who announced his retirement from international cricket in 2018, was all set to come out of retirement.
Earlier the buzz was that de Villiers will be making his return to international cricket during a T20I series. The wicket-keeper batsman admitted that AB de Villiers would have been a luxury to have in the T20 World Cup squad. Since now, the global event has been officially shifted to next year it will be interesting to see if de Villiers will make his comeback.
AB de Villiers was in like to play T20 World Cup – de Kock
“He was definitely in line. If fit, I would have loved to have AB de Villiers. I think any team would have loved to have AB de Villiers in their team. While we were pushing for him, now we will have to see when the T20 World Cup is going to happen now”, de Kock said on the Cricket Connected show on Star Sports.
Earlier this year before the ODI and T20I series against England, new South Africa’s director of cricket Graeme Smith named Quinton de Kock as captain of the limited-overs side. However, Smith decided against naming de Kock as the Test skipper as he did not want extra pressure on him. De Kock also opened about captaincy in all formats and stated it would have been too much for work for him.
“I think it is too much work, to be honest. I have to be the wicketkeeper, go up in the batting order. Captaining all three formats, in general, takes its toll. I don’t think I am the guy who can lead all three teams. I think I am pretty happy with T20s and ODIs,” the South Africa captain said.
Meanwhile, it is almost confirmed that AB de Villiers will next be seen in the Indian Premier League. The star batsman will represent Royal Challengers Bangalore later this year in the IPL. The BCCI is now awaiting the government confirmation to play the T20 league in UAE during September-November.
