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AB de Villiers (Gallo Images) |
Former South Africa captain AB de Villiers is still hopeful of returning to the national side for the T20 World Cup but admits things are very much up in the air right now.
With the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the T20 World Cup – slated for October and November in Australia – remains very much in doubt, and it has prevented De Villiers from making any concrete plans for the future.
“Yes, that is my worry. The schedule for next 12 months is unclear,” De Villiers said while speaking on Star Sports’ Cricket Connected show.
“That is one of my big worries and reasons why I am not committing to any cricket at the moment.
“I want to focus but there is a lot of uncertainty in terms of scheduling of cricket over the next 12 months. We will have to see what is going to happen.”
De Villiers revealed he very much has the support of new head coach Mark Boucher and Director of Cricket Graeme Smith.
“The desire to get me involved with the Proteas has been shown by Cricket South Africa as well. With Mark Boucher as coach and Graeme Smith as director, they are keen to get me involved which is very pleasing to hear,” he said.
“I hope everything works out and there a few things that need to fall in place. The most important thing to me is I have to be in tip-top form and I have to be better than the player next to me.
“If I deserve a spot in the side it becomes easy for me to feel like I deserve to be in the side and I have earned my spot.
“I have not been in the Proteas side for a while and I think that is important for myself and for other people as well to see if I am still good enough to play for them.”
Should the T20 World Cup be postponed to next year, De Villiers admits his participation would be in doubt.
“Yes things might change if the tournament gets postponed to 2021,” he said.
“Honestly it is something I don’t want to commit to at the moment, because of the past experiences and really getting hurt in the past by committing to certain things I wasn’t 100 percent sure of.
“I really want to get it right this time once I feel I am 100 percent ready to commit.”
On Wednesday, reports out of India suggested that De Villiers had been eyeing a return to the Proteas Test side, but he has since rubbished those claims.
– TEAMtalk media
