Photo by Sarah Ansell
AB de Villiers is very good. We’re pretty sure most of you will agree with that insightful assessment. But where do we see him at his best?
We can think of five immediately obvious environments in which AB de Villiers might be seen.
- In a music video
- Just sort of milling around in public, at an airport say
- In T20 cricket
- In one-day cricket
- In Test cricket
Let’s quickly run through each of these to try and work out where AB de Villiers is at his best.
Because if you want to see a thing renowned for its very-goodness, ideally you want to stand a reasonable chance of having the very qualities that define that very-goodness displayed to you, otherwise what’s the point?
In a music video
In a music video is a place in which AB de Villiers appears to be a below-average person. In a music video does not show AB de Villiers at his best. (More on this subject here.)
Just sort of milling around in public, at an airport say
AB de Villiers may well attract a certain amount of attention when he’s just sort of milling around in public, at an airport say, but we’d argue that this is merely residual attention resulting from his feats in other environments. AB de Villiers is no better at just sort of milling around in public, at an airport say, than anyone else. In fact he’s arguably worse, because he no doubt has a tendency to flee back indoors what with all the attention and whatnot.
In T20 cricket
AB de Villiers will often make slightly more runs than other people playing in the same T20 cricket match and he will generally make those runs slightly more quickly. AB de Villiers looks very good in T20 cricket.
In one-day cricket
We would argue that AB de Villiers looks slightly better in one-day cricket than he does in T20 cricket. Given more time to make runs, the difference between himself and other batsmen playing in the same match will generally become more apparent.
In Test cricket
In Test cricket, with no real time constraints, batsmen can go about making their runs however they damn well choose. They needn’t feel rushed into playing shots they don’t necessarily feel comfortable with. They can play how they want.
Despite this, there are times when even mere survival is beyond most batsmen when AB de Villiers not only survives, but also scores runs, and not only scores runs, but does so at a rate utterly beyond most people even on a day when survival is not a seemingly unattainable goal.
We would therefore argue that ‘in Test cricket’ is the environment where AB de Villiers is at his best.
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