AB de Villiers names his all-star IPL XI; MS Dhoni to lead

Former South African cricketer AB de Villiers picked his all-time eleven in the Indian Premier League (IPL). To start with, he picked Rohit Sharma, but didn’t appoint him as the captain. Rohit is, de facto, the most successful skipper in the history of the tournament, having won the title four times in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019 respectively. Rather, ABD went for veteran MS Dhoni as the captain of his lineup.

Dhoni has also tasted success in the IPL, winning the championship thrice in 2010, 2011 and 2018. Apart from Rohit, De Villiers zeroed in on Virender Sehwag as his second opener. However, he left out David Warner, the skipper of the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH). Among the foreign players, Warner is the leading run-scorer in the IPL and also led the Orange Army to glory back in 2016.

Among the top five run-scorers in the tournament, Warner has the highest average and strike-rate of 43.17 and 142.39 respectively. In the middle order, De Villiers picked himself and Virat Kohli, who has 5,412 IPL runs with as many as five centuries. In 2016, Kohli almost ended up scoring 1,000 runs in a single edition of the league. ABD, on the other hand, has been a brute force as well.

No Lasith Malinga in the eleven either 

Both Kohli and ABD play for the Royal Challengers Bangalore. He made the picks during a conversation with Harsha Bhogle on Cricbuzz. As his all-rounders, the Proteas batter went for Ben Stokes and Ravindra Jadeja. In 2017, Stokes was the most expensive player, being picked by Rising Pune Supergiant. He got 316 runs and 12 wickets, bagging the Player of the Tournament award.

He is currently with the Rajasthan Royals (RR). With 108 wickets and some handy knocks down the order, Jadeja hasn’t disappointed as well. Among the specialist bowlers, ABD picked Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who has 133 wickets and also got the Purple Cap quite a few times.

However, he snubbed the likes of Amit Mishra, Harbhajan Singh and Piyush Chawla, who all have 150 or more wickets. But that he snubbed Lasith Malinga could raises a lot of eyebrows. Jasprit Bumrah, Rashid Khan and Kagiso Rabada are the specialist bowlers picked by ABD.

Here’s AB de Villiers’ eleven: –

Virender Sehwag, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, Ben Stokes MS Dhoni (C & WK) Ravindra Jadeja, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Kagiso Rabada, Jasprit Bumrah.