Did you know that before AB de Villiers cracked his way a world record 31-ball 100 (his final score being 149 off 44 balls) in an ODI against the West Indies on January 18, 2015, he wasn’t even willing to bat? Openers Hashim Amla and Rilee Rossouw had forged a 200-plus partnership and captain de Villiers thought it apt to promote the young David Miller so that the left-hander could cash in on the good start.
Coach Russell Domingo, however, insisted on de Villiers batting, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Abraham Benjamin de Villiers begins his memoir — AB: The Autobiography — recalling this innings, one of the finest ODI innings ever played. During the course of the description of this innings, he also gives you a peek into the mind of de Villiers the batsman; his nervousness before he walks out to bat every time, his thought process, his exceptional anticipation, his ability to pre-empt a bowler’s move. All these qualities add to his aura of being — as Virat Kohli describes him to be — the ‘finest batsman of his generation’.
At one point of this innings, he writes, “...My drive is not perfectly timed, but it flies past mid-on and away to the boundary. That feels good. Sometimes in this complex game, for no apparent reason, everything just feels right. Even an imperfect shot feels right, no question.”
Batting seldom has been depicted in a simpler manner. This simplicity and sincerity shine through the book. In a chapter titled Crossroads, de Villiers tells a fascinating tale about how he develops his defensive technique in 2007, three years after his Test debut, after spending hours and facing hundreds of balls in the ‘nets’ from Jacques Kallis. The book is replete with such cricketing anecdotes that are at once interesting and insightful.
If Chris Gayle’s recently-published Six Machine... was a no-holds-barred, rags-to-riches account of a boy who defied several odds to become what he is today, de Villiers presents a feel-good story of a child who was destined for sporting greatness. “Our lives revolved around sport, any sport, any time, any place,” he writes. That said, de Villiers then goes on to bust many of the sporting myths built around him. Contrary to popular belief, he was never shortlisted for inclusion in the national hockey squad, he never held any national swimming record, he never sprinted at school level, he has almost never played badminton in his life, he never played any organised football, nor did he play rugby at South African representative level! While he was a talented tennis player, the pull towards cricket was far greater and cricket fans would be grateful for that.
The 32-year-old is unabashed while proclaiming his religious beliefs but makes no more than a token mention of controversial topics like match-fixing, quota system for coloured people in various national South African teams etc. But considering that he is still an active cricketer, his reluctance to deal with such sensitive issues in detail is only understandable.
This book, though, couldn’t have been complete without dwelling into the Indian Premier League through which de Villiers has assumed an iconic status in India. De Villiers makes no bones about his love for the league, not just for the money he earns out of it, but for the joy a cricketer gets performing in front of a crowd that, in his own words, makes India “the most inspiring place to play cricket.”
De Villiers’s IPL journey began with Delhi Daredevils who bought him in the 2008 auction for $300,000 per year in a three-year deal. The offer made him remark, “Really? Are you sure there isn’t one nought too many?” His current contract with the RCB, he admits, embarrasses him. It’s a whopping $1.1 million, making him one of the highest-paid players in the league. “It is difficult for me to understand how someone from a relatively small town in rural South Africa can be so fortunate and so favoured that when he walks out to bat, or simply takes guard, in almost any cricket ground in India, he can be greeted by tens of thousands of happy people chanting his initials. A-B-D! A-B-D! A-B-D,” he mentions.
While he strongly bats for the T20 format, de Villiers doesn’t just lend lip service when he talks glowingly about Test cricket. “Personally, I am not overly concerned about the future of Test cricket. The commercial reality that ODIs and T20s draw large crowds and generate 95 per cent of the revenue is clear, but the popularity of limited-overs cricket does not mean there is no room for Tests.”
He also draws an interesting “roast beef-hamburger” analogy to drive home his point that Test cricket would survive the onslaught of shorter versions. “Many people predicted the end of roast beef when hamburgers came on the market. Those fears were misplaced because, while the mass market loves the convenience of fast food, a significant core audience still cherishes the real thing,” says de Villiers, who has scored 8,074 runs in 106 Tests, and not 14,000 in 98 Tests as the blurb at the beginning of the book would have you believe! This is perhaps the only jarring note in an otherwise delightful read.