De Villiers scored 73 of 33 at a strike rate of 221 when everyone else in the game worked to score 233 runs on 207 balls.
It’s not like he’s being asked to show an extra arrow in his generous quiver to make life hell for bowlers. AB de Villiers already owns a whole range of shots, some that he even plays like an aerialist. On this pleasant Monday afternoon in Sharjah, another unadulterated AB-ness demonstration was allowed. It was the last over of RCB’s innings and by then De Villiers was already in his venomous prime, but this shot topped the six sixes he had thrown so far.
Andre Russell had switched to bowling since turning the wicket, a move meant to cut through De Villiers’ hitting arc that had earned him a fair degree of success, just a six-ball limit. As he entered, the permutations ran through his mind: a surprise short ball or go fuller? In line with the dies or wider? The Jamaican hit the perfect yorker off the stump. It should have been enough against most hitters, but obviously not for the most magical of a cricket ball hitters. De Villiers moved deep and cross and guided the ball with an open bat face up over a point back for four. It was the cricket equivalent of a shot that destroys the Death Star.
Virat Kohli, who called his hitting partner ‘superhuman’, smiled and shook his head in disbelief. After all, you’ve seen this so many times before: the same moment, the same movement, the same result, happening simultaneously in slow motion and stuck in fast forward, which defines De Villiers in a way. It was all so AB.
But there’s a reason why Kohli also commented that “only AB could do what he did today.” What he did was score 73 of 33 with a strike rate of 221 when everyone else in the game worked to score 233 runs on 207 balls. Sharjah launched another slow, two-paced surface, the kind that saw the RCB captain, fresh off a 90 *, celebrate his only limit, a third-man lead, with a shout.
For a man who loves to move around the crease to open up areas behind the stumps, De Villiers can stand absolutely still when the occasion calls for it and put pressure on the bowler again. Today was one of those cases. The Kolkata Knight Riders had strangled RCB down the middle, operating with a third man and a thin leg inside the circle and forcing the hitters to deliver short deliveries of good length towards the limits of the square. Kohli and Aaron Finch tried to dash for the ball early, but struggled with their timing against the deft changes of pace.
Dinesh Karthik admitted that KKR was looking forward to De Villiers’ tap performance on the fold. Never arrived. In 2015, Bhuvneshwar Kumar described bowling with this form of de Villiers as a useless game of double bluffing. Today, he camped deep into her crease and stood absolutely still. It’s a tactic used by other great hitters like Russell himself and Hardik Pandya, but where De Villiers is better at it than anyone else is in how he never loses shape in his posture, meaning his head and torso stay still and body. it is in immaculate balance. in the fold.
De Villiers opens more areas on the field than anyone else because he doesn’t show his cards until the moment the pitcher drops the ball. His tendency to crouch a bit in his stance also helps him keep the player guessing where he has set his goals. It also ensures that he can escape his cute improvisations and employ any other alternative, be it a cover campaign or a hit to the ground, from the same place.
When Kamlesh Nagarkoti or Pat Cummins hit the middle of the court with a cutter as they had successfully done earlier in the game, De Villiers sat, waiting, and led them to the cow corner. So I would assume that a Cummins class bowler would knock out a batsman who falls behind with a full ball. But De Villiers complements this stillness with a quick pair of feet. They allow you to move sideways and up and down at a rapid pace before your hands take control. It’s a dazzling concept, creating time against a ball thrown at 140 km / h.
De Villiers can also drag a foot in and out of the ball line in a fraction of a second and his mobility mixes the very concept of block hole length. It is no coincidence that it receives so many follow-up releases. Cummins and Russell offered him three of those Yorkshire wannabes who were duly sent to the border.
Captain Dinesh Karthik best summed up the situation. “He’s a really tough hitter to pitch sometimes, because of the way he moves around his crease. Today was one of those days where he stood still, cleared his left leg, and got a lot of balls off the ground. The only ball [that would have worked] he was the perfect inswinging yorker. Everything else was happening, “he said.
De Villiers served 29 of the last two overs, 83 of the last five. He scored 73 in a 100-run partnership with Kohli, hitting 33 of 46 balls and an average score suddenly went out of bounds. A man had risen above the rest of the field by standing still. Without even having to get down on his knees, De Villiers had brought KKR down with his own.
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