African Sports Monthly International Women's Day Special Edition | Page 10

He is widely regarded as
the current best batsman
in the world and one of
the greatest of all time. As
of December 2015, he is
ranked first and second in
the ICC ODI and Test
batting rankings
respectively.
The son of Dr. Abraham
Benjamin de Villiers, he
attended Afrikaanse Hoër
Seunskool (Afrikaans High
School for Boys, also
known as Affies), a public
school located in Pretoria.
De Villiers is a right-handed
batsman, who, in a very short period of time, has accumulated many runs in Tests
including 21 centuries and 36 fifties. He still holds the record for most Test innings
without registering a duck (78), before being dismissed for nought against
Bangladesh in November 2008. He also holds the second-highest individual score by
a South African batsman in an innings, with 278*.
Until 2012, he was an occasional wicket-keeper for South Africa, although since the
retirement of regular Test keeper Mark Boucher and under his own ODI captaincy he
has started to regularly keep wicket for the national side in Tests, ODIs and T20Is,
but then decided to give up wicket keeping after the debut of Quinton de Kock, and
started becoming a part-time bowler. He was one of South Africa's part-time bowlers
along with JP Duminy and Farhaan Behardien to fill the quota of the 5th Bowler in
the 2015 Cricket World Cup.