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Cape Town - AB de Villiers says he wants to help his younger team-mates in a similar way to how Jacques Kallis helped him early in his career.
De Villiers spoke to Netwerk24 after winning the South African Cricketer of the Year award in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
He won the award for the second successive year, matching the performance of Makhaya Ntini, who won it back-to-back in 2005 and 2006.
Only eight players have received CSA’s most prestigious award, with Kallis (2004 and 2011) and Hashim Amla (2010 and 2013) the other players to be awarded it twice. The other previous winners are Shaun Pollock (2007), Dale Steyn (2008), Graeme Smith (2009) and Vernon Philander (2012).
“He (Kallis) played a big role in my career,” said De Villiers.
“The same goes for Hashim and all the other batsmen who batted around him in their time. It’s the sort of influence I’d like to now have on the guys around me.”
De Villiers swept the board of almost all the accolades available to him, winning five awards. He thus emulated the performance of Hashim Amla who won five awards in 2010.
De Villiers was also named ODI Cricketer of the Year while his peers and his fans honoured him by voting for him as SA Players’ Player of the Year and SA Fans’ Player of the Year respectively.
He also received the KFC So Good Award for scoring the fastest century in the history of ODI Cricket against the West Indies in December 2014.
