AB de Villiers by the numbers, and the 31-ball hundred
A Test average above fifty, the fastest fifty, hundred and 150 in one-day history, and a range of shots that made conventional field settings pointless.
AB de Villiers holds the records for the fastest fifty, the fastest hundred and the fastest 150 in one-day international cricket. He also averaged 50.66 in Test cricket and once batted 297 balls for 43 to save a match.
- 8,765 Test runs at 50.66, from 114 Tests
- The fastest ODI fifty (16 balls), hundred (31 balls) and 150 (64 balls)
- He kept wicket for South Africa for several years without being a keeper
- 43 from 297 balls to save a Test in Adelaide, in the same career
The record
| Format | Matches | Runs | Average | Span |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tests | 114 | 8,765 | 50.66 | 2004-2018 |
| ODIs | 228 | 9,577 | 53.50 | 2005-2018 |
The full record is on his player page.
The 31-ball hundred
Johannesburg, January 2015, against West Indies. He came in at 247 for 1 in the 39th over and made 149 from 44 balls.
Along the way he reached fifty from 16 deliveries and a hundred from 31, both of which are records that still stand and are not close to being approached. The innings contained 16 sixes and 9 fours.
The specific thing that made it possible was not power. It was that he could hit any delivery to any part of the ground, so a bowler had no length or line that was safe and a captain had no field that covered it. Bowling to a batter who can hit a yorker over fine leg and a bouncer over extra cover is a problem without a solution.
The other innings
Adelaide, November 2012. South Africa needed to survive the final day to draw a Test against Australia.
De Villiers batted 297 balls for 43 not out. Faf du Plessis batted 376 for 110 not out. South Africa held on at 248 for 8 and the series was drawn.
That innings is the reason the "he was just a slogger" reading of him does not survive contact with the record. A batter who holds the fastest hundred in one-day history and can also bat five hours for 43 has a range that essentially nobody else in the modern game has demonstrated.
The keeping
He kept wicket in Tests and one-day internationals for several years, having never been a wicketkeeper.
The reason was squad balance, and it was a substantial ask: a top-order batter taking the gloves so South Africa could play an extra bowler, with no specialist background in the position. He did it competently rather than brilliantly, and eventually gave it up because of the effect on the batting.
The parallel with Kumar Sangakkara is direct: two of the best batters of the era, both keeping for years for the same structural reason, both averaging substantially more once they stopped.
The 360-degree thing
The phrase attached to him is that he could hit through 360 degrees, and unlike most such phrases it is close to literal.
The two shots that did it were the scoop over the keeper — played to yorkers and full-length deliveries, sending the ball behind the wicket where no fielder is permitted in numbers — and a lap-sweep against pace played from outside off stump.
Neither is a shot most batters can play safely. Together, they mean that a fielding captain protecting the leg side has opened the off, and protecting the off has opened the leg, and there is nowhere left.
Modern T20 batting is built on that idea. He was the first player who could execute it against genuine international bowling.
Country and role narrow it. The T20I column and a 2004 debut close it.
AB de Villiers — The fastest fifty, hundred and hundred and fifty in one-day internationals, all of them still standing. Full record
Test cricket, properly
The one-day and T20 records get the attention and the Test record is the more conventional achievement.
8,765 runs at 50.66, with 22 centuries, batting mostly at four or five in a South African side that was among the best in the world for a decade. He scored hundreds in Australia, England and India, and his overseas average is close to his home one.
The 278 not out against Pakistan in 2010 is the largest score. The 43 from 297 in Adelaide is the one that gets mentioned more.
What made the range possible
Two technical things, and both are unusual.
An extremely still head and a late decision point. He picked the length very early and committed very late, which is the combination that lets a batter play either an orthodox shot or an improvised one off the same delivery. Most batters commit to one when they start the movement.
Exceptional hand speed rather than exceptional strength. He was not a large man and did not hit through the line with the force some of his contemporaries did. The sixes came from timing and from finding the parts of the ground nobody was protecting.
The second point is why the method transferred to Test cricket. A batter whose scoring depends on power has to take risks against a good ball; one whose scoring depends on placement can wait.
The other sports
He was, by most accounts, an outstanding schoolboy athlete in several disciplines — rugby, tennis, golf, hockey and swimming among them — and the list is quoted often enough that some of it has become exaggerated.
The relevant part is not the anecdote. It is that a batter who arrives at international cricket with a broad athletic base tends to have the balance and the hand-eye coordination that improvisation requires, and improvisation is the whole of what separated him.
The retirement
He retired from international cricket in May 2018 at 34, citing exhaustion, having played more or less continuously across three formats for fourteen years.
The retirement produced two years of speculation about a comeback and a public argument about whether he might be recalled for a World Cup. Nothing came of it, and he continued playing franchise cricket for several more years.
South Africa's failure to reach a World Cup final during his career is the gap in the record, and it is not one he could have closed alone.
- A 31-ball hundred
- Shots nobody else could play
- One-day and T20 records
- The 360-degree label
- 43 from 297 balls to save a Test
- A Test average of 50.66 across fourteen years
- Keeping wicket for years to balance a squad
- An overseas Test record close to his home one
The T20 career
78 T20 internationals and a long franchise career, and the format is the one his method was best suited to and the one his international record is thinnest in.
South Africa played comparatively few T20 internationals during his career and did not reach a final. The bulk of his short-form cricket was in the IPL, where he batted at four for a decade and produced the innings the format is most associated with him for.
That is a common pattern for players of his generation and it distorts the record: the format a player was best at is frequently the one with the fewest international matches available in it.
Where he sits in our dataset
Difficulty tier 1 on the player list. South Africa, batter, 2004 to 2018 is a narrow field, and the T20I column separates him from the batters around him.
- The fastest fifty, hundred and 150 in one-day international history
- A Test average of 50.66 across 114 matches, home and away
- 43 from 297 balls at Adelaide, in the same career as the 31-ball hundred
- He kept wicket for years without ever being a keeper
The short version
He held the two ends of the batting spectrum at once: the fastest scoring in one-day history and a five-hour rearguard to save a Test. The range is the record, and the shots he invented are now what every T20 batter is taught.
For the shots that came out of it, see the sweep, the reverse sweep and the switch hit, and for what a strike rate is measuring, strike rate means nothing alone.