Matthew Breetzke failed to find a place in South Africa's Champions Trophy squad.
The South African squad for the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy is filled with big names like the skipper Temba Bavuma himself, Heinrich Klaasen, Aiden Markram among a few others. One surprising exclusion from the Proteas squad, however, is that of batter Matthew Breetzke.
During the IPL 2025 mega auction in November last year, Breetzke was acquired by Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) for INR 75 lakh. He also turned up for Durban’s Super Giants (DSG) in the recent SA20 tournament, scoring 117 runs from nine matches at an average of 16.71 and a strike-rate of 103.54.
Breetzke made his ODI debut only as recently as February 10 against New Zealand during a tri-series match in Lahore. He made a positive impression right away, scoring 150 runs off 148 deliveries.
By doing so, he became the 19th batter to slam a century on ODI debut and the first-ever to score 150 runs. Breetzke has played just one other ODI since then, against Pakistan in Karachi, where he scored 83 runs. He has aggregated 233 runs from two ODIs at a whopping average of 116.50, but the reason why Breetzke did not make the South Africa squad for the 2025 Champions Trophy is pretty simple.
The ICC had set February 12 as the deadline for all eight teams to finalise their squads for the 2025 Champions Trophy. Breetzke made his ODI debut only on February 10, and while he impressed in his maiden outing, the selectors made a tough call of excluding him. Let’s add some context. The knockout stages of the SA20 tournament were taking place in the Rainbow Nation when Cricket South Africa announced their squad for the tri-series involving hosts Pakistan and New Zealand.
Players centrally contracted with South Africa had an obligation to play in the SA20 knockouts, which meant that several senior players had to miss the tri-series. As a result, South Africa named six uncapped players in their squad for the tri-series and one of them was Breetzke. For the first two games, South Africa announced just a 12-member squad and were boosted by the arrivals of players like Heinrich Klaasen and Keshav Maharaj before their game against Pakistan on February 12.
A similar incident had happened last year when Cricket South Africa announced a third string side to tour New Zealand for a Test series, which clashed with SA20. The knockout games of SA20 2025 took place between February 4 and February 8, whereas South Africa played all their games in the tri-series between February 8 and February 12.
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Had the senior players flown to Pakistan right after the SA20, it would have meant a very short transition from one tournament to another, and also from one format to another (From T20s to ODIs). Ryan Rickelton and Tony de Zorzi are the Proteas’ regular openers in ODIs.
However, they had commitments in the SA20 and as a result, Breetzke opened with Temba Bavuma,, who was not part of SA20 2025 altogether. Bavuma, however, opened with de Zorzi in the game against Pakistan on February 12 and Breetzke was then demoted to No 3, where he still impressed with a half-century.
Breetzke’s statistics in List A cricket aren’t impressive either. From 61 matches, he has aggregated 1878 runs at an average of 33.73. This also includes two centuries and 12 fifties.
Breetzke, however, does not have to fret just yet. He’s still very early in his cricketing career and there are several ICC tournaments lined up, including the 2026 T20 World Cup and the 2027 ODI World Cup. All he has to do is keep performing consistently in the domestic level and his time to shine on the big stage will come.
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