‘To Get Back To Decent Form Was A Lot Harder’: AB De Villiers Opens Up About Challenges Faced By Irregular Cricketers

AB De Villiers has opened up about how the player is coping by not playing regular professional cricketer.

Image Courtesy: AFP

IPL 2021: AB De Villiers is among the players who has not been playing any sought of professional cricket apart from IPL. Other players like Raina, Dhoni, Harbhajan are not looking like finding their best form in this year’s IPL. As Kapil Dev said that to expect a player to suddenly perform without much of match practice is not a very wise thing to ask for. But De Villiers is an exception in this case as he was the guy who won it for the RCB against the Mumbai Indians.

In the RCB’s ‘Play Bold’ series on the internet, AB admitted that it was difficult to get back to ‘decent form’. He said: “I must say the work to get back to decent form was a lot harder than before and the last match I played was in the last IPL. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t put in the hard yards and I started about two months ago. I had 2-3 months off, stayed fit in the gym and I started hitting cricket balls. Enough to get me to space, to get me going”

De Villiers also went on to speak about the pressure of constantly delivering in the middle order. He said: “It’s not always very enjoyable. I try and play the situations that I am confronted with, in the best possible way, sounds pretty simple. But the fact of the matter is that when you bat in the middle order, the situation changes every time. It’s a matter of adapting and trying to make most of it…It comes off more often than not.

But you always know that it’s possible that you are going to fail. Fear of failure always pushes me to focus more on the ball and do basics better. Try and get a start. It is important to start the first 20 balls well,” he concluded.