AB de Villiers’ shock retirement stunned the cricket fraternity. But no-one was perhaps more devastated than South African cricket as they now have big shoes to fill.

According to South Africa captain Faf du Plessis, they might just have the proper successor in the form Temba Bavuma. Speaking ahead of their Sri Lanka tour, du Plessis stated that de Villiers hadn’t played many Test series for the team of late and that is was a great opportunity for Bavuma to make the number four spot his own now.  

“AB has only played the last one or two series for this Test team, so he has actually not been playing for a while,” du Plessis said.

“It will be a nice opportunity for Temba or somebody else to put his peg in the ground and make the position his own again. Number four will probably be a good position for him (Bavuma).”

Despite playing in 29 Test matches, Bavuma has scored only one century while making 1395 in the process. His average is slightly below 35, which is a testament to the fact that he has to do much better in order to replace the irreplaceable de Villiers.

Meanwhile, the Protea captain also revealed that the team will conduct discussion as to what their middle-order should be in Sri Lanka as in subcontinent pitches, it is hard for the middle order batsmen to bat due to the wicket assisting spin and the ball reverse-swinging.

“There will be some good discussions in the team. Obviously, when you go to the subcontinent, the hardest places to bat will be in the middle because you come in facing the spinning and the reverse swinging ball,” he said.

As a result, the South Africa captain believes that there could be some shuffling in the middle order.

“So what I think we will discuss is that we will try and get our best players of spin in the middle periods to try and counter that.  So if that gives an opportunity to change our batting lineup a little bit, we will definitely be looking into that,” he added.

The Test series between South Africa and Sri Lanka will begin from the 12^th of July as this will be the first series they play since AB de Villiers announced his retirement.