AB de Villiers had every cricket fan and the whole cricketing fraternity shocked as he announced his retirement from international cricket with immediate effects.
Now, he has put his future in Indian Premier League (IPL) with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) under clouds, as he seemingly unfollowed RCB on the social media site Twitter.
"After 114 test matches, 228 one day internationals and 78 T20 internationals it is time for others to take over. I've had my turn and to be honest I'm tired," he had said in his retirement video message on Twitter.
"It's not about earning more somewhere else, it's about running out of gas and feeling that it is the right time to move on," de Villiers added.
De Villiers’ franchise RCB had crashed out of the IPL 2018 season in league stages, losing their last must-win match of the season. De Villiers had scored 480 runs in 12 games for RCB and took the catch of the season when he plucked Alex Hales’ hit for six at the boundary out of thin air.
"I have no plans to play overseas, in fact, I hope I can continue to be available for the Titans in domestic cricket," De Villiers had said in his retirement video, which put his association with RCB under the cloud.
Now with de Villiers seemingly unfollowing RCB, it seems even more unlikely that Mr 360 would make it back to India for the T20 extravaganza next year. However, de Villiers is still following the official handle of the IPL, Vijay Mallya, Siddharth Mallya and his best friend in the RCB unit Virat Kohli.
RCB had tweeted him to come back to India to play in IPL next year, as soon as De Villiers’ retirement was confirmed. De Villiers’ best season in IPL came for RCB in 2016 when he scored 687 runs and along with Kohli’s 973 runs, took RCB to the finals of the tournament.
Kohli and de Villiers were involved in five 100+ partnerships. They are the only pair in the world to be involved in two double century partnerships in T20 cricket. De Villiers scored 3282 runs in eight seasons for RCB. He also smashed two hundred and 25 half-centuries.
