NEW DELHI: Former South Africa captain AB de Villiers made a shocking revelation about his early retirement from international cricket saying he played the last two years of his career with an eye injury.
De Villiers, who retired from international cricket in 2018 at the age of 34, disclosed that his kid accidentally kicked him in the eye, leading to a detached retina and compelling him to play with impaired vision in one eye.

“My youngster accidentally kicked me on my eye with his heel. I started really losing vision in the right eye. When I got the surgery done the doctor actually asked me, ‘How in the world did you play cricket like this?’. Luckily my left eye did a decent job for the last two years of my career,” he told Wisden Cricket Monthly.

De Villiers also spoke about 2015 World Cup semifinal loss against New Zealand still hurt him big time and it took him quite some time to overcome the emotional impact.
“Covid certainly played a role, there’s no doubt about it. From an international perspective, the 2015 World Cup hurt big time. It took me a while to get over that and then, when I got back into the side and I was ready to commit, I didn’t feel the same culture that I really needed at that time.

I often found myself thinking, I don’t know, eh? Could this be the end of my career? I didn’t even really want to play IPL or anything else. I got away from everything in 2018 and then decided to push one more time with a bit of Test cricket, to try and beat India and Australia over here, and then I’ll call it. I didn’t want any spotlight on me. I just wanted to say, ‘I had a great time, thank you very much’,” he added.
De Villers announced his retirement from IPL in 2021 after being associated with the RCB franchise since 2011. De Villiers scored 5162 IPL runs with a staggering strike rate of 151.69.
Earlier this year, de Villiers was inducted in RCB’s hall of fame for his crucial contribution to the team.