What is ailing AB?

The world's best batsman was a glaringly obvious absentee when South Africa's Cricket World Cup hopefuls took the field at Hagley Oval to play their first warm-up match against Sri Lanka.

Instead, the man on whose shoulders so many of South Africa's hopes and dreams for this World Cup rest cut a starkly stationary figure on the boundary.

Officially - or according to Cricket SA's Twitter feed - De Villiers was "rested as a precaution due to a tight right hip".

But officially doesn't cut much mustard in the real world of "what if".

And those in the know would immediately think "groin injury" when hearing that kind of explanation.

Those same people would also know that groin injuries are notoriously difficult to recover from.

And so the "what ifs" began.

What if De Villiers gets no game time before SA play their first group match? What if he misses it?

Good thing, then, that most South Africans were sound asleep, with no option to watch the game on TV, when the toss happened.

So they could not see that the man who walked to the middle was clearly not the owner of the most runs in ODIs for SA as well as of the most 50s and the highest strike rate among their current players and the joint holder of the SA record for ODI centuries, not to mention one of the fastest hundreds yet scored by anyone, anywhere in the format.

De Villiers is, the panic-stricken would shriek, worth more than any other player to SA's World Cup cause. For the most part, that is undoubtedly so, but statistics - which we all know don't really tell the full story - disagree.

They reveal that SA have won 63.79% of the 174 ODIs De Villiers has played for them. But they are more successful when he is not around. Since De Villiers made his debut, when he does not feature in the side they win 65.71% of their ODIs.

Dale Steyn, too, in the cold, hard light of the stats, does not look like the match-winner he undoubtedly is by any other measure. When he plays, SA win 61.70% of the time. When he sits out, they are 63.34% successful.

But South Africans could at least take comfort in the knowledge that the man who did walk to the middle for the toss yesterday, and who holds the other half of the record for ODI centuries among current SA players, was Hashim Amla.

SA win 63.55% of the ODIs when the talismanic Amla plays. When he is not around, that figure drops to 45%.

• The game started blandly, with South Africa needing 72 more runs off the last 10 overs (with 10 wickets to spare). Five wickets fell for 51 runs in 45 balls before Rilee Rossouw and Vernon Philander nailed down the win with three balls to spare.