AB de Villiers: 15 things to know about the MR 360 career

Max Mashman | 12:00 p.m. BST July 20, 2025

What does it take to become a legendary cricket player? You need a raw talent, extreme dedication and, of course, a great personality. A little luck also helps. Many well -known cricket players have a combination of these features. Only one handle have them all. A particular player who checks all these boxes and has a huge amount of skills and commitment to sport is AB de Villiers, a former South African professional cricket player known for his shot skills.

Throughout his career, AB de Villiers attracted a huge audience and broke many records. Many of his fans liked to watch his matches; Some of them have pushed things further and put bets on its success. What makes betting online for cricket is that there is a wide range of events on which to bet and several types of bets that you can place. Those who supported AB de Villiers would certainly have had successful bets!

Even if AB de Villiers has officially retired from professional cricket on May 23, 2018, his heritage continues to impress people to date. It also inspires young people to take cricket and become professional players. Here are 15 facts on AB de Villiers and his extraordinary cricket career.

Personal details

AB de Villiers was born Abraham Benjamin de Villiers on February 17, 1984 in Pretoria, South Africa. He grew up with his parents and two older brothers. His father, a doctor who played Rugby Union, encouraged him to take a sport, which, of course, ended up being cricket. After playing for the South Africa U19 team, he made his professional debut by playing for the Titans during the 2003/4 season.

Conjugal life

AB de Villiers is married to three children: two sons and a daughter. He started going out with Danielle Swart in 2007 and offered five years later in 2012 at Taj Mahal. They got married the following year.

Nickname

AB de Villiers obtained the nickname MR 360 because of its ability to hit blows with precision and ease, it doesn’t matter where it was on the ground. He is also known as Superman thanks to his incredible performances in matches.

Most captures in a season

During the 2016 season, AB de Villiers took no less than 19 catches, which was a rate of 1.187 captures per sleeve. No one broke this record, but two other players, Riyan Parag and Ruturaj Gaikwad, got closer with 17 caught each.

Popularity of social media

Like many other high -level sport stars, AB de Villiers is active on social networks. The retired professional cricket player is currently the most followed South African with 30 million followers. He made 980 positions, many of which were linked to the cricket in one way or another. He also has accounts on Facebook and X.

The fastest and fastest fastest

AB de Villiers held the fastest fifty OIC record for more than 10 years from January 2015 to May 2025, when Matthew Forde equaled his record of 16 shots faced. As for the fastest centuries of the OIC, the record of 31 De Villiers bullets was undefeated.

Standard at the stick

When he started his professional cricket career, AB de Villiers was a counter carrier, although he most often played as a hitter, preferring the average order. He has become known for his impressive stick skills and rather unorthodox movements. To date, it remains one of the small drummers to have an average of the stick greater than 50 in the ODI and the test cricket.

Do your dreams come true

In 2010, AB de Villiers and the singer-songwriter ampie du Preez, released an album. His title is Afrikaans for “Make Your Dreams come true”. There are 14 tracks, nine of which are in Afrikaans and the other five are in English. These are mainly power walks on monitoring your dreams and being in love. The songs were recorded from 2009 to 2010 and the album was released on the Sony Music Africa label. AB de Villiers also had a group called The Cowboys.

2015 Cricket World Cup

Some would say that 2015 was the culmination of the Cricket career of AB de Villiers. When he participated in this year’s cricket World Cup, he was one of the best performing players. He found himself as the third top scorer with a total of 482 points and did a brilliant work as captain of the national team of South Africa. However, he failed to lead them to victory when South Africa lost against New Zealand in the semi-finals.

Honors of the International Cricket Council

Throughout his career, AB de Villiers has received many honors from the International Cricket Council (ICC) thanks to his skills and talents as a cricket player. He was appointed three times the Male ODI Cricket Player ICC of the year (2010, 2014 and 2015) and was inducted at the CPI renown temple in 2024. He also won the ICC to the male test team of the year five and the MOD team of the ICC of the year.

No more price

AB de Villiers won several other prestigious honors during his career. In 2014 and 2015, in addition to being appointed Cricket of the ODI of the ICC, he received the prize for cricket cricket of the year in cricket in South Africa. Then in 2022, he was inducted at the renowned temple of the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. During his stay with this Indian Cricket team from Twenty20 from 2011 to 2021, he scored 4,491 points in 144 rounds.

Other sports

AB de Villiers has devoted a large part of his life to cricket, although he has practiced some other sports at various stages of his life. These include hockey, rugby, golf and tennis, although he said that cricket is the only one in which it was good. He was considered for the national hockey team at some point. For a certain time, he would have been a versatile that excelled in all the sports he had tried, although he specified in his autobiography that this was not the case.

Autobiography

Speaking of his autobiography, he was released in 2012 and has the simple title AB of Villiers – Autobiography. It is well assessed on Amazon with an average note of 4.5 out of 5, against 870 reviews. As you can imagine, he tells the story of the first years and the professional career of AB de Villiers in his own words. He also discusses his religious beliefs and mentions that the Holy Bible is one of his favorite books.

Jersey number 17

Throughout his professional cricket career, AB de Villiers wore a jersey with number 17. He chose this number because it was the day of birth and he considered him luck.

Friendship with Faf du Plessis

Faf du Plessis is another South African cricket player who has become one of the best sports players. The former captain was labeled one of the best fields of land and fully format drummers of modern cricket. He and Ab de Villiers go back well to school together. In fact, when they were 15, they played for the school’s cricket team.