Ab de Villiers, a legendary cricketer from South Africa, is of the opinion that the punishing schedule makes it increasingly difficult to keep players “inspired” for all three formats of the game. As a result, there is an urgent need for cricket boards and cricketers to have an honest communication over the latter’s preferred choice of formats.
The cricketer, who is now 38 years old and surprised the cricketing world when he announced his retirement from international play in 2018, added that his playing career could have been managed better as well. After another three years, he called it quits from all kinds of cricket and retired.
He decided to walk away from the sport in order to spend more time with his family, which is something of a luxury for an all-format player in today’s game.
Due to the ever-busier international calendar and the proliferation of T20 leagues around the world, it is currently impossible to compete in all three formats of the game without taking frequent pauses in between.
Ben Stokes, the captain of England‘s test team, was not able to continue producing his best performance in both one-day internationals and tests, therefore he was forced to withdraw from ODIs in 2017. When asked by PTI about the necessity of picking formats in the midst of the rigorous scheduling, De Villiers responded with, “That’s a difficult question.”
“Because I don’t want to be the one to just declare that you have to give up one or two of the formats. And once again, it’s an issue that affects cricket on a worldwide scale at the moment: how to keep the players motivated to play all formats of the game for their respective countries.
According to AB De Villiers, the players’ careers may be lengthened if they were more transparent about their goals in all of the different formats.
In addition to this, he anticipates that the cricketing boards would provide the players with transparent communication regarding their place in the overall scheme of things.
“But I do think there’s room with the various boards around the world to pinpoint players, to have community discussions and communication early on in players’ careers, to understand what they want to achieve, first of all, and secondly, where they fit in with regards to the cricket in their own country to represent the country internationally.” “But I do think there’s room with the various boards around the world to pinpoint players, to have community discussions and communication early on in players’ careers, to understand what they want to achieve, first of all,
“But also to be content competing in leagues located all over the world. In addition, the value of the experience cannot be overstated.
We discussed before how players like SKY (Suryakumar), Dewald Brevis, and myself were able to take our games to the next level, in large part due to the influence that these leagues had on us.
In the end, that is the goal that we would like to accomplish. if there is no way to accomplish it. And if there is a clear indicator that a player is perhaps a little bit weak in one format, or is perhaps not as inspired to achieve milestones in order to go a long way in one or two formats, then yeah, but that communication needs to happen.
“And I think that during the course of my career, not only from my side but also from the side of Cricket South Africa, communication should have been improved to ensure that we planned correctly. “Communication is key,” stated “Mr. 360,” summing up the situation nicely.
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