AB DE VILLERS : MAN WITH THE MAGIC WILLOW

PART 1 - AB DE VILLIERS

Abraham Benjamin "AB" de Villiers (born 17 February 1984) is a South African cricketer, who captains the South African One Day International (ODI) team,[1] having succeeded Graeme Smith after the2011 Cricket World Cup.

Widely regarded as the best batsman in the world at present,[2][3][4] De Villiers dominated the top of the ICC Test batting rankings in 2014, along with Kumar Sangakkara. As of January 2015, he is ranked second in the ICC Test and first in the ODI batting rankings.[5]

The son of Dr Abraham P de Villiers, he attended Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool (Afrikaans High School for Boys, also known as Affies), a public school located in Pretoria. De Villiers is a right-handed batsman, who, in a very short space of time, has accumulated many runs in Tests including 16 centuries and 32 fifties. He still holds the record for most Test innings without registering a duck (78),[6] before being dismissed for nought against Bangladesh in November 2008. He also holds the second-highest individual score by a South African batsman in an innings, with 278*. Until 2012, he was an occasionalwicket-keeper for South Africa, although since the retirement of regular Test keeper Mark Boucher and under his own ODI captaincy he has started to regularly keep wicket for the national side in Tests, ODIs and T20Is, but then decided to give up wicketkeeping after the debut of Quinton de Kock, and started becoming a part-time bowler.