Is AB de Villiers the greatest IPL batter ever?

When AB de Villiers took to Twitter to announce that he'll be retiring from all forms of the game, all I could think of was: "Wow. Anyway".

The 37-year-old has had a distinguished career across formats, particularly in the IPL, where he represented the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for more than a decade.

Honestly speaking, for someone inclined towards India in international cricket and whose Chennai Super Kings in the IPL, I have not been the biggest fan of ABD.

It is not due to any malice towards him or his team. It is just that I have seen more of Faf du Plessis than De Villiers. And anyone who has seen Du Plessis bat for a long time will attest that once you have fallen in love with him, it is next to impossible to be charmed by any other batter. AB de Villiers coming from South Africa too made that even clearer.

In that backdrop, while fans from Bangalore feel that De Villiers deserves a statue of him erected in front of the M Chinnaswamy stadium, I did not share the same enthusiasm. What is so special about him anyway, I thought?

However, almost immediately I realised how absurd that question was. That's because, once you see the numbers, it becomes abundantly clear that AB de Villiers is one the greatest batters to have graced the IPL.

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AB de Villiers - What the numbers say

AB de Villiers with Virat Kohli - A decade of domination at RCB

In the last 11 years for the franchise, the only thing AB de Villiers hasn't done for them is bowl. Quite literally. He has kept wickets, opened the batting, and has played at No.3, No.4, No.5, No.6.

He has done everything reasonable one can ask of a batter, and he has done it with aplomb.

Only five other batters have scored more runs than ABD in the IPL - Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina and David Warner. All of them are openers except Raina.

Among the group, only Warner has a higher average, and he has also faced almost 500 more deliveries than the South African. Who has a higher strike rate than De Villiers, though? Nobody.

Who has hit more sixes among them? Nobody. In the entire IPL? Only Chris Gayle. If Gayle is the only person ahead of you in a T20 stat list, you must be doing very well indeed.

Since 2012, De Villiers has had ten consecutive seasons in the IPL where he has scored at least 300 runs. And in every single one of them, he has averaged more than 30. That is a decade's worth of domination!

In 2017, he struck his runs at 'only' a strike rate of 132. Stop there to ponder for a moment. How many other batters can you use that sentence for? "Striking the ball at only 132" - because in the last decade, that has been De Villiers' lowest strike rate in an IPL season.

AB de Villiers is an IPL legend.

His second worst strike in an IPL season came in 2021; it was... 148. Barring those two seasons, in eight other IPL campaigns, De Villiers struck the ball at a strike rate of 150+. That's an economy rate of nine an over. That means if RCB could send out only AB de Villiers, and he never got out, they would be guaranteed 180 runs every game!

In 2016, he scored a mammoth tally of 687 runs at a strike rate of 168 and an average of 52. In 2015, it was 513 runs at an average of 46 and an even better strike rate of 175.

These two seasons would have been enough to be talked about as one of the best ever. AB de Villiers had them in back-to-back campaigns! And then he came back in 2018 to score 480 runs at an average of 53 and a strike rate of 174.

Honestly, the more you look at his numbers, the more made-up and unbelievable they sound. Especially when you take into account where he bats in the RCB lineup, he is basically their entire middle order and finisher rolled into one.

Yet, AB de Villiers will be remembered as someone who couldn't do it in the big games - someone who did not bring any silverware to his franchise - someone who went missing when it mattered most.

Even as someone who is not the biggest fan of AB de Villiers, I can tell you how unfair that perception is. Every year, eight teams strive to be the last team standing in an IPL season. For a few years, that number was ten.

So to say that one batter should have won it on his own is not only naive and juvenile, it is also impractical and demeaning to the rest of the team. Thats' because no batter in the world is good enough to win the IPL on their own, nor would anyone ever be.

Despite giving his best every season, AB de Villiers could not lead RCB to an IPL title.

It is the nature of the tournament. It rewards the best team across the season. Even then, the knockouts can go either way. RCB, as much as they were lucky to have AB de Villiers with them for 11 years, were simply never the best team across any season in the competition.

However, AB de Villiers still made them look better than they actually were. He still gave it everything what RCB asked of him, and much more than any team had a right to ask of a batter. He might not have brought any silverware to Bangalore, but Bangalore owes him enough to bring a statue of him to the city.

Thank you.

Dankie.

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