AB de Villiers refutes stories about his sporting achievements as a youngster

AB de Villiers playing football during a training session

A few months back, an image was doing the rounds on the social media that stated AB de Villiers’ supposed expertise in a number of sports. In his recently released autobiography, the South African has categorically busted all these rumours.

In a separate chapter titled “All-Rounder”, de Villiers talks about the various sports be played before becoming an international cricket star. Before talking about them in detail however, he lists down each and every rumour that was stated on the internet, and shoots them down one by one.

Sky Sports had published an online article on 28 February 2015, describing de Villiers as ‘cricket’s record-breaking all-rounder’, listing a number of achievements, which are actually false.

He starts off with hockey, saying he was never shortlisted for the South Africa National Hockey team, but played the sport for one year at high-school, and was a member of the Afrikaanse Hoer Suenskool Under-16 A team.

Moving on to the fact about him playing for the SA national football squad, he says that he never played organised football or soccer, except for playing the sport for fun in the national team’s practice sessions.

He then talks about rugby, stating that he did play the sport at primary and high school level, but never represented the nation at any level, either at SA Schools or SA under-20, and was never the captain.

He was also rumoured to be the holder of as many as six national school swimming records, to which the 32-year old says that he did set an Under-9 breaststroke record at his Primary school, but has never held any national school record.

The RCB batsman was also reported to be the holder of the fastest 100 metres time among SA junior sprinters, and there was even an article about Usain Bolt saying that de Villiers was the only cricketer who could beat him. The star cricketer jokes that he just could, if he was riding a motorbike, and goes on to say that he did not sprint at all in school.

Other false claims included being an Under-19 badminton champion, a national medal winner for a science project, and the fact that he plays golf off a handicap of scratch. However, de Villiers does say that the claim of him being a national Davis Cup player is almost true, and that although there was no such thing as a national junior Davis Cup team, he did play Tennis as a youngster, and competed and won against a number of players who went on to become professionals.

He also went on to be coached by Danny Sullivan, and subsequently his father, Derek Sullivan. Yet, he chose to go for team sports, and took to cricket when his tennis schedules started clashing with his cricket games.