AB de Villiers ‘chuffed’ to reach number one spot

On this week’s ICC Cricket World audio show South Africa’s AB de Villiers talks about his recent rise to top spot in the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for ODI batsmen as well as his nominations for various awards at this year’s LG ICC Awards, including the LG People’s Choice Award.

“It’s obviously a great privilege for me to have made the number-one spot; I’ve worked hard in the last two seasons to be able to gain that top spot. At the end of the day though, it’s not just about me, cricket is a team sport and it’s all about me contributing to the effort of my team and them doing well.

“I have to say I am pretty chuffed though and I do hope I can keep up my form and take it into the coming season and onto the biggest ODI event, the ICC Cricket World Cup next year where I want to help take my team to the top,” says the 26-year-old.

The right-handed batsman has been nominated this year for three LG ICC awards ? ICC Cricketer of the Year, ICC ODI Player of the Year and the inaugural LG People’s Choice Award with the latter being the one he is most excited about.

“It’s great to have been nominated for the LG People’s Choice Award and to see that the public want to be able to show their appreciation towards my cricket is fantastic. It would obviously be one of the greatest awards to win but just to have been nominated as one of the five is for me a fantastic achievement,” comments de Villiers.

The show can be used in whole or part by radio stations that want cricket content, while the public can also download it straight from the ICC website at http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/media_interactive_zone/podcast.php.

Joining de Villiers on this week’s show, former England captain Nasser Hussain looks ahead to the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 and what the tournament has in store for those teams who will be travelling to the Asian sub-continent in February next year.

“I think it will be a good tournament and I’m definitely looking forward to it. The sides will have different conditions to deal with, not all the surfaces are going to be conducive to spin and along with all those factors it’s going to be hot and there’ll be plenty of travel so it will be hard work for all the teams,” says Hussain.

“You need to have bottle playing in India especially against India where they have huge crowds who are extremely passionate about their cricket. It’s all about maintaining focus on the game,” adds Hussain on the possible atmosphere players can expect of the tournament.

Apart from the above interviews, the show has the usual round up of cricketing news and an update of the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for Test and ODI cricket.

The weekly ICC Cricket World audio show runs for 15 minutes and has been put together by the ICC’s global broadcast partner ESPN STAR Sports.