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AB de Villiers to keep wickets in T20s for South Africa

ABD is set to keep wickets again

With Quinton de Kock out of the side, AB de Villiers will keep wickets again in the shorter format of the game, reports ESPNcricinfo . He had to resume keeping after Boucher retired from both ODI’s and Tests. He eventually took over captaincy, and it was too much to handle coupled with the responsibility of keeping.

ABD, as we know can do anything and everything on the field, but his chronic back problems thwarted him from keeping.

Speaking about de Villiers opening, South Africa’s T20 captain Faf Du Plessis said, “Deciding to put AB at the top was a conscious change we made leading up to the World T20, that makes sense because, as du Plessis said, "the best time to bat is in those first couple of overs and you want to give your most explosive, best players a crack at getting in early and scoring runs."

Despite that, he didn’t open the innings last night in the 1st T20 against New Zealand and instead came out at number 3. 

AB did not play the last series against Bangladesh, where South Africa lost the ODI series 2-1. AB was granted paternity leave as his wife gave birth to their first child.

On convincing AB to keep Faf joked, "That's the benefit of being best friends with someone - you can tweak things a little more, to be honest, keeping wickets is something he doesn't really want to do; it's not on his priority list and it does affect him on his back."

“AB will keep only in T20 cricket - one-day cricket is just too much for him from a captaincy point of view," du Plessis said. "He likes being next to the bowlers and controlling the game. If he was keeping, he is too far away. Also, his body is quite important; we need AB to play for as long as possible so in saying that, Test cricket and one-day cricket, it's going to be tough for him to keep. It would be great if he could, but to get longevity out of AB it’s important that he doesn't. It's nice because we've got possibilities there for the T20s and it will only be something until the World Cup, not after that."

 

 

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