In a recent development, it is now being known that former South African batsman AB de Villiers could make his international return for the Proteas side against Sri Lanka later this year. This is expected since the Head Coach of the South African national team has given the player a deadline of 1 June to make himself available for selection.

Notably, the 36-year-old was not selected for the T20 series against Australia but now it has been confirmed that he along with Imran Tahir and Chris Morris have been given a deadline to make themselves available for the national team if they want to feature in the South African squad for the forthcoming ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia.

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“The big one is the IPL so we decided to let those guys – the free agents if you want to call them that – do the IPL and then afterwards make themselves available,” Cricket Australia’s digital content team quoted Boucher as saying.

“We’ve still got quite a few games (before the World Cup). From the first of June, which is the Sri Lanka tour, those guys need to make themselves available. Whether we select them is another story. But they need to make themselves available if they want to put their hands up for a World Cup spot,” he added.

Last year, de Villiers gave the fans much to cheer about when he revealed that he could come out of retirement to play in the upcoming Men’s T20 World Cup.

“I would love to. I’ve been talking to ‘Bouch’ (new South Africa coach Mark Boucher), (new director of cricket) Graeme Smith and (captain) Faf (du Plessis) back home, we’re all keen to make it happen,” Cricket Australia’s digital content team had earlier quoted de Villiers as saying.

“So I’m thinking of throwing my name in the hat and hoping that everything will work out,” he added.

It is worth highlighting that de Villiers had surprisingly announced his retirement from international cricket on 23 May 2018. Although he reportedly tried to make himself available for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 he wasn’t able to do so.

The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2020 will commence from 18 October and will conclude on 15 November in Australia.