South African cricket legend AB de Villiers has recently disclosed shocking revelations about his decision to retire from international cricket in 2018. The former Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) player in the IPL announced his retirement from international cricket in May 2018, stunning the cricketing world.
De Villiers revealed that he played the last few years of his international cricket career with a detached retina, a condition resulting from an accidental kick to his eye by his youngster. He stated, "My youngster accidentally kicked me on my eye with his heel. I started really losing vision in the right eye. 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."
In addition to his eye injury, De Villiers cited the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the disappointment of the 2015 World Cup as contributing factors to his retirement decision. He mentioned, "Covid certainly played a role, there's no doubt about it. From an international perspective, the 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."
De Villiers had expressed interest in representing South Africa in the 2019 ODI World Cup but did not receive a response from Cricket South Africa (CSA) as the offer was made just a day before the squad announcement. The Proteas, led by Faf du Plessis, failed to reach the semi-finals in the 2019 edition.
Reflecting on his decision to retire, De Villiers expressed his thoughts, saying, "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.'"
The former South African captain concluded his illustrious international cricket career with 8,765 Test runs in 114 matches, 9,577 runs in 228 ODIs, and 1,672 runs in 78 T20Is, with an overall tally of 47 centuries. Remarkably, De Villiers continued to play in various T20 competitions, including the IPL for RCB, until the 2021 season, despite dealing with a detached retina.AB de Villiers reveals why he retired so early
