AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers (Image Credit: Twitter)

Champion South African cricketer AB de Villiers is raring to go in the 14th season of the cash-rich Indian Premier League, which starts with defending champions Mumbai Indians locking horns with the Virat Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore in Chennai on Friday (April 09).

Having made his debut for the Bangalore-based franchise in 2011, AB de Villiers will be turning up for his 11th season for the Royal Challengers Bangalore this year and the Proteas batsman is feeling ‘as young as over’ and is looking forward to giving his ‘absolute best’ this year.

“I had a nice few training sessions, a lot of fitness, a lot of gym work. I feel ready and I am as young as ever so looking forward to it,” AB de Villiers said during an appearance on RCB’s Bold Diaries.

“We have spent a lot of time in the room in the last week and before that, we were travelling. It was quite intense coming out. I hit the floor running and gave it my absolute best,” he said. “Had a lot of fun out here tonight and I was hitting the ball okay. Not a 100% so I will come back tomorrow for a bit more,” the 37-year-old added.

“It is very enjoyable to just be here. I am very excited to play another IPL with the RCB boys and just going to have a lot of fun this year,” he further said.

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AB de Villiers
AB de Villiers (Image Credit: Twitter)

AB de Villiers, who made a shocking decision of retiring from international cricket at the peak of his career in 2018, hasn’t played competitive cricket since the last IPL.

And so, the right-hander has been sweating it out in indoor and outdoor sessions in the past six weeks to ensure that he is in the best possible shape in IPL 2021.

“Yeah, I have quite a few sessions for the last six weeks. Quite a few outdoors and indoors. I mixed it up nicely. When I wanted to work on shots I would go indoors and if I wanted to have a feel for the outdoors with the nibbling around a bit I would spend an hour or so in the outdoors,” de Villiers signed off.

RCB fans will hope AB de Villiers does an encore of his performances from the last season where he smashed 454 runs in 15 games at an average of 45.40 and a blistering strike rate of 158.74 with five 50-plus scores.

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