ABD and RCB, to be continued ...
"ABD! ABD! ABD!" It was not uncommon to hear that chant at a cricket ground in India, but this time it was puzzling. The shout went up at the Kotla before Tea on December 7, 2015. AB de Villiers was batting. But Delhi homeboy Virat Kohli was on the verge of sealing a 3-0 triumph in his first home series as Test captain. Surely that mattered more?
"ABD! ABD! ABD!" There it was again at the Chinnaswamy on May 1, 2018 during an IPL game between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians. That time it made still less sense: De Villiers wasn't even at the ground. He was in the team hotel recovering from a fever.
That wasn't the only instance of him becoming the centre of attraction despite not being at the scene. For too much of the 2019 Word Cup, Faf du Plessis was lumped with trying to explain to the press why South Africa's squad didn't include De Villiers. Nevermind that he had retired from international cricket more than a year earlier, and had murmured a casual, almost perfunctory, belated offer of a comeback weeks before the tournament.
So Du Plessis would have been forgiven a touch of deja vu on Tuesday (May 24) - the day before he is due to lead RCB in the IPL eliminator against Lucknow Super Giants at Eden Gardens, when a De Villiers story stole the headlines again.
In a lighthearted video interview with Danish Sait's "Mr Nags" comedy character posted on RCB's social media feeds, Kohli was asked whether he missed De Villiers, who quit all cricket a month after last year's IPL. "I miss him a lot," Kohli said. "I speak to him regularly, quite regularly. He keeps messaging me. He was in the US recently watching golf. Augusta Masters is what I heard it was called. So he told me he was there experiencing it with his friends and family.
"We stay in touch and he's very keenly watching RCB, obviously, and hopefully here next year in some capacity." At that, "Mr Nags" did a theatrical double take, complete with electronic bells and whistles. Then it was back to an impishly smiling Kohli: "Did I spill the beans?"
The video was posted on May 11. Surprisingly, it took another 13 days - which takes us to Tuesday - for De Villiers' response to hit the screens. "I'm glad to hear Virat's confirmed it," he said in another video interview, this one with VUSport. "To be honest, we haven't decided on anything yet. I will definitely be around the IPL next year. I'm not sure in what capacity, but I am missing getting back there. I've heard a little bird tweeting, saying that there might be some games in Bangalore next year. So I would love to return to my second home town and see a full capacity stadium there, the Chinnaswamy, again. I would love to return. I'm looking forward to it."
Cue online pandemonium as almost every cricket commentator, real and imagined, weighed in with a view on De Villiers' apparently miraculous resurrection. Not enough of them made clear that the possibility of him coming back as a player was negligible. Asked if he could expand on the news or offer insight, Edward Griffiths - De Villiers' agent - told Cricbuzz: "He has been inducted into the RCB hall-of-fame, and that induction is scheduled to take place in Bengaluru next year. As of now, that is all."
So far, so true: the franchise named De Villiers and Chris Gayle as inaugural members of their hall-of-fame last Tuesday. But, clearly, there is value even in a non-playing De Villiers and RCB will know the worth of having him around, in whatever invented job description, beyond his induction. Those yells of "ABD! ABD! ABD!" lubricate the flow of money into coffers. From RCB's and doubtless De Villiers' perspectives, why not? The team and the tournament have done more to create the cult of ABD! than international cricket could accomplish for any non-Indian, even a star of De Villiers' magnitude.
He appeared in every IPL until this year; for Delhi Daredevils in the first three editions, the next 10 for RCB. He also played 415 matches for South Africa across the formats and another 144 first-class, list A and non-IPL T20 franchise games - the latter for seven teams in six countries. But it's as a Bangalore boy that De Villiers will be remembered, particularly outside South Africa.
He has played more games for RCB than anyone except Kohli, owns the second and third-highest scores yet made in the team's colours, is their second-highest run-scorer after Kohli, and has shared with Kohli their two highest partnerships for any wicket. Little wonder Kohli says he misses him. The bigger picture is that the connection between the De Villiers and RCB brands is rock solid. This is the age not of the team but of the player, of individual social media giants who attract attention for what they post almost as much as for what they achieve on the field. De Villiers, like Kohli, ticks those boxes.
Bangalore are among the IPL's most popular and well-resourced outfits. The Rs. 464 crore (USD111.6-million) Vijay Mallya paid for them in 2008 made them the second most expensive franchise after Mumbai Indians. RCB have been represented by players of the calibre of Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis, Kevin Pietersen, Yuvraj Singh, Glenn Maxwell, Quinton de Kock, Anil Kumble, Zaheer Khan, Dale Steyn, Mitchell Starc and Muttiah Muralitharan. But, despite reaching the final three times, they have never won the title.
De Villiers played in two of those deciders - in 2011 and 2016 - and in a semi-final - for Delhi in 2009 - along with seven preliminary finals or eliminators for RCB. He scored three half-centuries in those games, two of them match-winning performances, and was on the victorious side three times.
For South Africa, De Villiers featured in knockout matches in four editions of the World Cup, two in the Champions Trophy and two in the World T20. It must hurt somewhere in his soul that he was not required to bat in the only one of those games that South Africa won: the 2015 World Cup quarter-final at the SCG.
No doubt De Villiers is as proud to have played for South Africa, and to have played so well, as anyone else. But he will carry with him the scars of catastrophes like the 2007 World Cup semi-final against Australia in St Lucia, when South Africa crashed to 27/5 inside 10 overs, and the quarter-final of the 2011 edition of the same tournament in Dhaka, when they lost 8/64 in 19.1 overs to help New Zealand defend 221.
De Villiers was part of South Africa's first ever Test series win in Australia, in 2008/09, when he scored 63 and 106 in the first match at the WACA and 56 in the third in Sydney. He was a significant factor in the long batting line-up that was central to South Africa winning in England in 2012 to secure the Test mace, and in the same year in the successful rubber in Australia, when he scored 169 in the second innings of the third match in Perth. De Villiers is among only four South Africa players who retired with a Test average of 50 or more, and only the second in the modern era after Kallis.
And yet, for many, a vacuum will loom at the centre of his international career. De Villiers would consider this unfair, but somehow his performances seemed more about himself than about South Africa's team. Maybe that's unavoidable for someone who is an outrageously better player than anyone else around. But consider that the memory of his 31-ball century against West Indies at the Wanderers in January 2015 - still the world's fastest ODI hundred - is significantly more uppermost than the fact that South Africa made what remains their highest total in the format that day, and that openers Hashim Amla and Rilee Rossouw also scored centuries and shared 247, then South Africa's highest stand for any wicket, and that the home side won by 148 runs.
Contrast that with the place accorded in the annals to Du Plessis' vigil in the second innings of his Test debut, in Adelaide in November 2012. Bigger than his more than six hours at the crease in intense heat denying and defying bowlers as good as Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon on a challenging pitch, bigger than his undefeated 110, is the truth that Du Plessis saved the match for his team. It is the difference between heroes and superheroes.
But don't expect chants of FDP! to soar even if Du Plessis guides RCB to glory this year. Teams only have the bandwidth for so many superheroes, who only have the bandwidth for so many teams. The real truth of De Villiers' to-be-continued relationship with RCB is as simple as that: they need each other.
