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De Villiers targets return as Heat go back to drawing board

South Africa superstar indicates he's willing to return for another crack at the BBL as Chris Lynn ponders captaincy in season post-mortem

AB de Villiers wants to return next summer and Chris Lynn hopes Brisbane can keep him as the Heat insist their BBL09 flop is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Touted by rival clubs as the team to beat ahead of the tournament, both Lynn and de Villiers took responsibility for their early KFC BBL exit which was confirmed by another underwhelming performance against wooden-spooners Melbourne Renegades on Monday afternoon.

A match-winning 71 off 37 balls against table-toppers Melbourne Stars to keep the Heat's season alive was de Villiers' only major contribution but the South African is eager to have a second season in teal.

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"Let's hope so, it's quite a long way away still but I would love to come back," de Villiers told Channel 7 after their seven-wicket defeat at Marvel Stadium.

"I had a really a lot of fun with Chris and (coach) Darren (Lehmann) and the boys. They looked after me like I was one of their own.

"We played some really poor cricket … myself to blame in a way. We were a little bit lackadaisical with our batting effort.

"Just a little bit of intensity, just a bit of experience (is required) – hopefully I can be that guy."

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Lynn added: "I hope we get him back. I'm not sure on that, we'll leave that to powers above.

"He would have liked a couple more runs, but that's the way it goes sometimes. With him not scoring as much runs as he would have liked, next year he wants to come back really hungry."

De Villiers has previously expressed interest in a return to South African national side for the T20 World Cup this year, meaning fans could see him play in two tournaments in Australia next season.

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A succession of disastrous batting collapses plagued the Heat during the season, running hot and cold as they also posted two of the 12 biggest totals in BBL history.

Ahead of the tournament incoming coach Darren Lehmann called on his team to "bat smarter" than they have in previous seasons and Lynn admitted it remains an area for improvement.

"On our day I think we're the best team in the comp," Lynn told reporters. "We seem to either get 200 or be all out for 100."

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"The games where we did score 200 we definitely did (bat smarter). It was our lack of communication (why) we fell short to those mediocre totals.

"But it's something we've definitely got to work on. It's not just batting, it's bowling, it's fielding awareness.

"There’s no reason to throw our blueprint out for finals. It definitely works."

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Matthew Renshaw was a shining light in finishing second behind Lynn on their leading run scorers charts while de Villiers said he was impressed by the Heat's bowling stocks, which has been their Achilles heel in previous campaigns.

Lynn declared that he remains the right man to skipper the club in BBL10 but conceded he fell short of expectations with the bat despite being the Heat's top batter with 387 runs at 29.76 and a strike-rate of 148.84.

The T20 specialist, who will play in the Pakistan Super League and the Indian Premier League in coming months, said the captaincy may have at times weighed on him at the batting crease.

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"The challenge for me is to be a good captain but also scoring plenty of runs as well," Lynn said.

"As captain you've got to look after 15 or 16 other blokes and I might have just went away from my own game at times.

"That's the challenge of it. Over the next 10 months I get to work on that on and off the field, whatever opportunities I get overseas. I'm hungry as ever to do well because we don't have a great record at the Heat in the win-loss ratio.

"I'm the man in the job to turn that around."