When did the AB de Villiers legacy start?

AB de Villiers scored the fastest ODI fifty and the fastest ODI hundred in the same match

AB de Villiers has no doubt become one of the greatest cricketers in the modern era, as his ability to move his wrists and hit some of the most feared bowlers away for a six and still throw himself at every ball is astonishing. But where and when did the de Villiers legacy start?

Making his debut at the tender age of 20, de Villiers was thrown into the South African XI after consistent performances for his domestic team, the Titans. De Villiers wasn’t the only young gun to make his debut against England in that test match, as a prospering fast bowler called Dale Steyn started off his career, but that’s another journey on its own.

De Villiers performed well in his first series when he ended off the last test match with 201 runs, which included his maiden century. Soon after he made his debut in the one-day format and made promising runs in the middle of the order, de Villiers career didn’t take off as well as it could have.

During 2005 and 2006, he suffered from a brief slump, as he averaged 37.24 and 31.57 overall respectively. He had a bad run in 2005, especially in the one-day format of the game, where he only averaged 15.78 in 14 games.

After the brief slump in 2006, de Villiers evaluated his batting and regained form in the 2007 Cricket World Cup in West Indies. He made 146 against the hosts, despite suffering a hamstring injury during the game. It was there, coupled with a few match winning performances, where he started gradually becoming one of the best batsmen in this cricketing era.

In 2008 and 2009, he morphed into a world class batsman with consistent performances, such as his unbeaten 217 against India, which was when he became the first South African to make a double century against India when he made an unbeaten 217 in 2008 at Ahmedabad.

De Villiers has opened and has even come in at number eight and is the highest century maker for South Africa in one-days with scoring 23. 2010 became the batsman’s dream year, as he averaged a whopping 65.27; making 2154 runs with a high score of 278 not out against Pakistan.

It was during the middle of 2010 when de Villiers started to become the premiere batsman he is today and his success continued in the following years, as his average never went below 47 in Test cricket and ODI.

Despite his lack of play in the shorter format of the game, he has been one of Royal Challenges Bangalore retained players since 2011, surging them to finals on multiple occasions.

In 2011, de Villiers was named the captain of the one-day side and although there was trepidation on his side, it did not deter his batting, as he made 467 runs off his 10 games at an average of 51.88. In the ODI series against Sri Lanka, he became the player of the series after scoring 329 runs at an average of 109.66.

It was then in 2012, when de Villiers had to take more responsibility and became the number one wicket keeping option, after the sudden accident and retirement to Mark Boucher during the South African tour to England.

Quinton de Kock took over Boucher’s limited format position, as de Villiers stayed behind the stumps in Test cricket till de Kock’s Test match debut in 2014.

There isn’t a series that goes by where de Villiers hasn’t contributed with a match winning or valuable performance, as each year he gives us a batting display to remember him by with an average each year above 52 in Tests and ODIs.

Other than being one of the best batsman and the best fielder in the world, de Villiers also has a knack for bowling, as he has 11 wickets overall.

His best performances come in 2015, where he made 149 off 44 balls and surged South Africa to a massive score of 439. Another 400 plus score came about recently when South Africa took on India in the fifth and final cricket match, where de Villiers made 119 off 61 balls.

There are a few records that the 31-year-old holds, such as playing 78 Test matches without getting out for a duck and his 98 consecutive test match streak came to an end when he missed the Test match series between Bangladesh in 2015 due to the birth of his son.

AB de Villiers
	Ranking	Average
Test	3	52.09
ODI	1	54.21
T20	34	22.88

Here are some of the records de Villiers sits with:

- Fastest fifty in ODI cricket (off 16 balls)

- Fastest century in ODI cricket (off 31 balls)

- Fastest player to get to 7000 and 8000 one-day runs respectively

- Most sixes (16) in an ODI match, this equals with Rohit Sharma and Chris Gayle

De Villiers has been in the top three of the batting rankings for Test and ODI team for the past six years. He is often called a freak due to his inability to produce a bad inconsistent performance for his team. He has become one of the most liked cricketers in the world and one everyone looks up to.