AB de Villiers drops hint of coaching RCB in IPL 2024

Former South Africa skipper AB de Villiers has dropped hints of coaching Royal Challengers Bangalore in the upcoming edition of the IPL 2024. The 40-year-old stated that Virat Kohli expressed his desire to bring him back to the set-up but there hasn’t been any form of official communication from the franchise’s end. 

In 2023, RCB honoured AB de Villiers along with Chris Gayle into their Hall of Fame after which, the former cricketer joined the broadcast team. The plan remains the same for the Pretoria-born cricketer as he revealed that he will soon travel to Mumbai to join the broadcast team. However, he kept the doors open for a possible coaching role in case the head coach Andy Flower or skipper Faf du Plessis wants him.

“Nothing confirmed yet, Virat has hinted that he might want me to come over and spend a bit of time with him and some of the batters. That call will come from Andy Flower, Faf and the team. For now, I'm just going to be in Mumbai for the first few weeks of the IPL. I'm doing a bit of commentating,” said de Villiers on his YouTube channel.

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Notably, De Villiers announced his retirement in November 2022, which came as a shock to the cricketing world, as he looked extremely fit in the season before. He played 184 games in the cash-rich league and scored 5162 runs at a strike rate of 151.69. After his retirement, the former cricketer mostly focused on broadcasting and on his YouTube channel.

On the other hand, the legendary cricketer stated to be ‘upset’ after Aiden Markram was removed as the captain of the Sunrisers Hyderabad. He highlighted that the South Africa international has won back-to-back SA20 tournaments as the captain of Sunrisers Eastern Cape and expected a longer run for him as captain in the IPL.  

“A bit of an upset to me perhaps to see Aiden Markram being moved across and sort of just had to make way for Pat Cummins there, even though Aiden Markram has won back-to-back SA20 tournaments,” De Villiers said.