South Africa legend AB de Villiers has made some shocking revelations about his early international retirement in 2018. In May 2018, while playing for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the IPL, De Villiers shocked the entire cricketing fraternity as he announced to step aside from international cricket. 

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Recently, De Villiers opened up on his retirement call and revealed that he played the last few years in international cricket with a detached retina. “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,” De Villiers told Wisden Cricket Monthly.

In addition, De Villiers revealed that in the two years leading to his retirement from all forms of the game, in 2021, the swashbuckling batter had been in the dark. “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.”

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De Villiers had expressed interest in turning up for South Africa for the 2019 ODI World Cup, in England and Wales. However, the offer was made just a day before South Africa’s squad announcement and, hence, it went unanswered by Cricket South Africa (CSA) as they backed the De Villiers-less squad for the marquee event. Under Faf du Plessis, the Proteas failed to enter the semi-finals in the 2019 edition. 

ABD reflected on that time and further opined, “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 ended a glorious run in international cricket with 8,765 Test runs in 114 matches and 9,577 runs in 228 ODIs. In T20Is, he returned with 1,672 in 78 games, at a strike rate of 135.16. He ended his international run with 47 hundreds overall. 

It is unbelievable to think that De Villiers continued to play in various T20 competitions post-international retirement with a detached retina. He played in the IPL, for Virat Kohli-starrer RCB, till the 2021 season before pulling out from the game completely.

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