South African cricket legend AB de Villiers recently shared the reason for his early retirement from international cricket, revealing that he played his last two years with a detached retina. AB de Villiers, who was representing Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the Indian Premier League (IPL), announced his retirement from international cricket in May 2018.
Despite stepping away from international cricket, de Villiers continued to participate in franchise-based Twenty20 leagues, including his notable stint with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
AB de Villiers Revealed The Reason Behind His Early Retirement
Speaking to Wisden Cricket Monthly, de Villiers explained that his decision was influenced by an incident where his youngest child accidentally kicked him in the eye, resulting in a detached retina and compelling him to play with impaired vision in one eye.
“My youngster accidentally kicked me on my eye with his heel. I started really losing vision in the right eye,” the former South Africa captain told the publication.
“When I got the surgery done the doctor actually asked me, ‘How in the world did you play cricket like this?’. Luckily my left eye did a decent job for the last two years of my career,” he added.
Furthermore, de Villiers highlighted the impact of COVID-19 on his decision not to reconsider his international retirement. He disclosed that the painful loss in the 2015 World Cup semifinal had a profound impact on him, and it took him a considerable amount of time to move on from it.
“Covid certainly played a role, there’s no doubt about it. From an international perspective, that 2015 World Cup hurt big time. It took me a while to get over that and then, when I got back into the side and I was ready to commit, I didn’t feel the same culture that I really needed at that time,”
He added: “I often found myself thinking, I don’t know, eh? Could this be the end of my career? I didn’t even really want to play IPL or anything else. I got away from everything in 2018 and then decided to push one more time with a bit of Test cricket, to try and beat India and Australia over here, and then I’ll call it. I didn’t want any spotlight on me. I just wanted to say, ‘I had a great time, thank you very much’,”
AB de Villiers has featured in 114 Test matches, 228 One Day Internationals (ODIs), and 78 Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) for South Africa. In Test cricket, he amassed a total of 8,765 runs, while in ODIs, he scored 9,577 runs across 228 matches.
