Former South Africa cricketer AB de Villiers shocked the cricketing world when he announced his retirement from international cricket in 2018. But the cricketer is keen to make a return to international cricket and also expressed his thoughts days before the ICC World Cup 2019 in England. And now with the ICC T20 World Cup looming large, Proteas head coach Mark Boucher has set a potential return date for the star batsman.
Meanwhile, AB de Villiers has been in discussions with Cricket South Africa's new director of cricket Graeme Smith and head coach Mark Boucher – both former teammates of his – about making a comeback for the T20 World Cup. Since his retirement, de Villiers has been a regular feature in various franchise-based cricket and a star attraction across the globe.
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IPL is the big one for them: Mark Boucher
The 36-year-old was not picked for the recent T20 series against Australia or the upcoming tour of India, but comments from all parties have indicated it's a case of when, not if, he makes a return. With a view to that, head coach Mark Boucher gave the likes of de Villiers as well as T20 specialists Imran Tahir and Chris Morris a deadline of June 1 to make themselves available for the national side again if they want to be considered for the World Cup.
"The big one is the IPL so we decided to let those guys – the free agents, if you want to call them that – do the IPL and then afterwards make themselves available," Boucher said at a Standard Bank sponsor's event in Bloemfontein.
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"We've still got quite a few games (before the World Cup). From the first of June, which is the Sri Lanka tour, those guys need to make themselves available. Whether we select them is another story. But they need to make themselves available if they want to put their hands up for a World Cup spot," he added.
Although the entire schedule for South Africa's series against Sri Lanka is not fixed as of yet, but it is likely to have three Twenty20 Internationals followed by the same number of ODIs.