2015: A SPACE ODYSSEY

I know how West Indian bowlers feel. I tried to pin down AB de Villiers for a week and got absolutely nowhere.

My brief was straightforward. Do an in-depth interview with the mercurial middle-order star. Show us the man behind the legend, the bloke behind the scoring machine who reached 7 000 runs in One Day Internationals faster than anyone in history. I emailed the Proteas media liaison with the naïve enthusiasm of a young Caribbean bowler running in to bowl the first over of the morning: with a bit of luck, I thought, this could be in the bag by the first drinks break. The liaison was optimistic that we could find twenty free minutes for a phone-call.

And then De Villiers bludgeoned, walloped, spanked, thrashed and cudgeled 149 off 44 balls in Johannesburg, and overnight went from being a beloved golden boy to an untouchable golden god. Optimistic emails became hedged, then apologetic, and then nonexistent. I wasn’t going to talk to AB after all.

At first I was disappointed. There was so much I wanted to ask him. Where does he go from here? 150 off 43 balls? How does his impossible niceness affect his ability to sledge? (“Call yourself world-class? You’re merely one of the top three talents in your beautiful and culture-rich country!”) But as I watched South Africa steamroll the West Indies into a small maroon puddle in the ODI series, a new thought occurred to me: AB de Villiers deserves better than a sports interview.

We’ve all endured them.

Q: You won the game. How are you feeling?

A: Ja, a lot of credit to the guys, they dug deep and gave 110 percent.

A lot of pressure on you to win the next match?

Ja, a lot of pressure on us to win the next match, for sure.

How are you going to win the next match?

We’re going to dig deep and give 110 percent.

What keeps you motivated?

I like digging deep. And obviously giving 110 percent.

No. Someone who can score at three runs a ball shouldn’t be tied to the laws of journalistic reality. It would have been a crime – vivisection by cliché – to impose the banality of interview on a man whose batting is pure fantasy. And so I decided to conduct an interview with AB de Villiers in a parallel universe in which sports writers can ask anything and sports stars are free to speak their minds. This, then, is the interview I never had with a South African superstar.

TE: Let’s first talk about your incredible record.

ABdV: Thanks, but it’s not really a record, just some songs on YouTube. But the fans seem to like them.

I was thinking more of your status as cricket’s current superstar. Your average over the last few months is mind-boggling.

Thanks, but I don’t really know what that means.

You don’t?

“Average” isn’t in my vocabulary.

So what do you call your records?

I don’t call them. They just come to me.

Oh very good!

Thanks.

On current form you’re the best batsman in the world, but how did it all start? How did the boy become the superstar?

Ag, you know, it was a pretty standard start. My planet was dying and my parents stuffed me in into an escape-capsule, punched in the co-ordinates for Earth, and the rest is history. Well, except that the capsule disintegrated around me as I came through the atmosphere and the heat kind of burnt off my exoskeleton, so that’s why I look human.

We saw you play some outrageous shots during your amazing knock at the Wanderers. The World Cup starts in a fortnight. Can we expect any new shots?

Absolutely. I’m working on something called The Shank, where I leave my crease slightly, well, a lot, actually. Basically I run down the pitch, snap the bowler’s leg, remove his tibia, whittle it with my teeth into the shape of a bat, and then run back into my crease to loft him back over his head for seven.

Six, you mean.

Hey guy, don’t ride your defeatist small-picture thinking into my mental hacienda.

Sorry. But doesn’t the bowler see you coming? And how can he bowl a ball with no shin-bone?

It all happens really fast. You’ve heard the expression “quick hands and feet”? That.

I must apologize in advance for the next question. I’m sure you and the team are all tired of answering it, but it’s something that’s haunted South African cricket for years now.

“How does Faf get his hair to stay so perfect even when he’s been sweating under a helmet for hours?” I know, it’s weird.

No, I mean the issue of choking at World Cups. I’m sorry to bring it up, but it’s something that’s going to be talked about a lot over the next month. So what are your thoughts on choking?

Ja look, it’s a metaphor I don’t really understand because I don’t ever choke.

I know, you always deliver under pressure and you’ve hauled the team out of some really bad –

No, I mean, I am physically unable to choke. My throat can expand to seventeen times the diameter of a human throat. On my home planet this adaptation allows us to feast on the giant eggs of the Eagle-Iguanas that haunt the high plains of X’arrqh, but it’s also great in cricket because it means I can inhale 3000% more oxygen than anyone else. But having said that, yes, the Proteas have a patchy record in World Cups and we’re working hard to remedy that.

Any specific game plan?

Derp. Score more runs than them. Flip man, sports writing is sheltered employment hey?

Sorry I asked. It’s just that a lot of fans are wondering how you cope with being both the mainstay of the batting effort and the wicket-keeper. It must be incredibly demanding on your body. How do you keep so fit?

Actually the problem is staying less fit. My metabolism is very – OK, look, the physiology is complex, but in a nutshell I’m powered by a small neutron star. If I trained like normal athletes the star would explode, destroying all matter, and frankly I’m saving that outcome for in case we ever get into a corner in a Test series against Australia. So essentially to play international cricket I have to spend a lot of time eating pizza and cookie dough and lying in front of the TV.

Any favourite shows?

Game of Thrones. It’s basically a 40-hour batting clinic.

But isn’t it just graphic violence and – oh, I see. Right. Who’s your favourite character in Game of Thrones?

Faf du Plessis.

He’s not in Game of Thrones.

Have you scored 16 000 international runs and the fastest ODI hundred of all time?

OK, sure, now that you mention it, I really liked Faf in Season 3. Moving on. I know the fans are eager to know more about your life off the field, you know, the man behind legend? On your personal website you list a few favourites. Could we talk through them to give the fans a bit more insight into AB the man?

Sure.

So first up, you famously received a medal from Nelson Mandela for a school science project.

Ja, it was a miniature volcano I made in Standard 6.

Oh those are awesome, where you make the cone out of papier–mâché and then make it fizz with –

No, it was an actual miniaturized volcano. I carved granite into the shape of a caldera and then injected it with magma at vast pressure. Madiba was very impressed.

You say your favourite movies are Gladiator and A River Runs Through It. The common theme in both is, of course, flies, whether on fishing lures or open wounds. Would you say you enjoy a lot of fly-related art?

No.

OK, let’s move on. Apparently you’re scared of snakes. What exactly about them scares you?

Their teeth. Who did you say your work for again?

Sorry, that was a silly question.

Yes. Yes it was. Maybe ask questions I haven’t already answered on my website.

OK. Um. What’s you’re favourite book?

Hm. I think my favourite book is the rule book. I like to set it on fire with a flame-thrower as I ride past on a grizzly bear.

And when you’re not eating pudding to keep you in shape or actually playing? How do you like to unwind?

I’m actually quite a conventional guy, so I guess I like playing golf with mates, catching up on some series, maybe reading a thriller, playing my guitar, sword-fighting, kite-surfing on the backs of manta-rays, you know, stuff like that. Oh, I also really enjoy cage diving with sharks.

I haven’t done it but apparently it’s a rush.

Totally. They put some Great Whites in a cage and then I dive into the sea next to them and try to get into the cage using nothing but my teeth. It’s rad.

If you could travel back in time and talk to 10-year-old AB, what would you tell him?

I’d say “Calm down, little AB! Stop screaming! I know it’s freaky that a grownup version of yourself just materialized in your bedroom from the future, but I’m here to tell you important facts about the mid-1990s, mostly TV spoilers about what happens to Ross and Rachel and why The X-Files runs out of steam towards the end.”

What are your favourite qualities in a human being?

Forgiveness. You should always forgive people. Except if they are bowlers. Then you must destroy them and sow salt into their run-ups as you listen to the lamentations of their women. Oh, and hope. I love hope. I love to watch it draining out of the eyes of the fielding team as I reverse-paddle a fast yorker for seven over the ‘keeper’s head.

Where do you go from here?

Into space.

No, I meant it more as a rhetorical –

I don’t deal with rhetoric. I deal with facts. And my next mission is to go into space. Do you know how far you can hit a cricket ball in a zero-gravity vacuum? I’ve carved a little message onto a cricket ball with my teeth. It says “Stay away from Earth if you value your shin-bones.” Stephen Hawking estimates there could be billions of life forms out there and not all are going to be friendly.

So you’re…you want to…protect the Earth from, what, predatory extraterrestrial bowlers?

You learn fast.

And how are you going to get into space?

Ag, you know. The normal way. Put on something warmish, a fleece or a jersey or something, and then jump.

Jump. Into space.

Ja, a standing jump.

That seems unlikely.

That innings at the Wanderers seemed unlikely, and yet here we are.

Touche. AB de Villiers, it’s been a pleasure. You are not only a superstar but a gentleman too. Long may you…AB? Hello? Hello AB?

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First published in Sunday Times Lifestyle.