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Former South Africa legendry cricketer Ab de Villiers was one of the best batters across all the three formats of the game.
However, the 39-year-old retired from all forms of cricket after Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021. The former South Africa captain had announced his retirement from international cricket way back in May 2018.
But fans across the globe are eager to enjoy the slam and bang version of the Mr 360 degree cricketer again. With the new impact player rule in place in IPL, there are chances that veteran players like Ab de Villiers may come back from retirement to entertain the fans again with their explosive brand of cricket.
Opening up about the possibility in a recent interview, De Villiers said that he could still play a few blinders and stretch his careers like others with the 'impact player' rule coming in the picture. However, his conscience would never allow him to do that and he has lost the urge of international cricket.
"Being the best in the world when playing was the motto from the start of my career and playing a match as an impact player or playing just a couple of months of franchise cricket won't help me achieve that standard where I could compete against the likes of Virat Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav," said De Villiers.
The former great reckoned that lack of motivation and international cricket slowly diminished his competitive attitude.
"Definitely I could still play. But the drive is not there anymore. From a young age. It’s always just about being the best. I want to be the best if I come back and I’ll want to compete with Surya and Kohli and I just felt the last four years of my career not playing international cricket. I definitely didn’t play enough cricket towards the back end of my career. I think that was the main thing," De Villiers said.
"With this new rule know a lot of people are celebrating. It’s going to lengthen the careers of many players. To me, I could never do that. I could never just play two or three months of the year because I want to be the best in the world, and you can’t do that if you play for three months of the years. Absolutely no chance. Yes. You can practice for nine months. But nothing, nothing compares with middle practice with being out there and competition. So, with the minute that fire went off being the best in the world, I felt like, what? What am I doing? So, what exactly is going on now? So was tough the last few years in that regard as well. I felt like, you know what, I can still have my super knock here and there, but I don’t want to do that. I want to be the best," he added.
