De Villiers made his professional debut for South African domestic team Northerns in 2003 where he opened the batting and scored 58 and 61 in his first match. He has earned plenty of plaudits from teammates, opponents and pundits alike.

Such was his success that it would be just over a year before he’d make his international debut at the age of 20 in a Test match against England in Johannesburg.

De Villiers would go on to play 114 Test matches in total, the last of which he played in 2018. He finished his career with an average of 50.66 having scored 22 centuries as well as 46 half-centuries. De Villiers scored two double-centuries during his career, with his highest score of 278* coming against Pakistan in 2010. At the time, that was the highest score by a South African in Test cricket.

However, the range of de Villiers’ genius was best displayed in the contrast between two innings he played in consecutive matches against Australia in 2012. Needing to bat out for a draw on the final day at Adelaide, de Villiers scored just 33 runs off  220 balls to help South Africa escape defeat. In fact, in the 2010s, only Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers faced more than 200 deliveries in an innings for less than 50 runs. And de Villiers did on three occasions.

Cut to just one week later from his marathon 33 off 220 and South Africa turned out the victors against Australia in Perth thanks to an incredible 169 off 184 balls from de Villiers against a bowling attack including the likes of Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Johnson and Nathan Lyon.

AB de Villiers survived 220 balls for 33 to save the Adelaide Test in 2012 – and then thumped 169 off 184 to help win the Perth Test a week later.

The batter who could do everything; a player of incredible range, skill and versatility.

— Tim Wigmore (@timwig) November 19, 2021

His record as a wicketkeeper is also astonishing. While most have averaged more without the gloves than with them, AB de Villiers flips that orthodoxy on its head. He made 2,069 runs at 57.41 as a Test keeper. No gloveman with 1,000 or more runs has a better Test average.

As phenomenal a player as de Villiers was in Test cricket, he was arguably most feared in the white-ball game, holding the record for the fastest ODI 50, 100 and 150.

In all, de Villiers would play 218 ODIs, scoring 9577 runs at an average of 53.50 with a strike rate of 101.09. His finest hour – an it was literally a single hour – for South Africa in one-day cricket came in a match against the West Indies where he recorded the fastest ever ODI century, reaching three figures in just 31 balls. The next fastest is 36 balls.

In total, his innings against the West Indies lasted just 59 minutes, but saw him score a total of 149 off 44 balls including nine fours and 16 sixes. Less than six weeks later he would then face the Windies again, this time registering a relatively pedestrian total of 162* off 66 balls, but this came on the World Cup stage. He averaged 63.52 in all World Cups with a strike-rate of 117.92, while his campaign at the 2015 event will go down as one of history’s greatest. He averaged 96.40 with a strike-rate of 144.31.

De Villiers retired from all international cricket in 2018 in order to focus solely on playing T20 cricket. In the shortest format, he played a total of 320 matches and scored 9424 runs at an average of 37.24 and at a staggering strike-rate of 150.13. His highest score in the format was 133* and he would finish his career with four centuries and sixty-nine half-centuries in the format.

De Villiers also captained and kept wicket for South Africa on numerous occasions in all three formats. Most notably, de Villiers was ODI captain between 2012 and 2017 where he led the side for a total of 103 matches.