Matthew Breetzke failed to find a place in South Africa's Champions Trophy squad.
The South Africa squad for the 2025 Champions Trophy is filled with big names like Temba Bavuma, Heinrich Klaasen, Aiden Markram and others. But one surprising exclusion from the Proteas squad is that of batter Matthew Breetzke.
For the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 auction, 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. He scored 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.
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 already 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 ICC event is pretty simple.
The ICC had set February 12 as the deadline for all eight teams to finalise their squads. Breetzke made his ODI debut only on February 10. While he impressed in his maiden outing, the selectors made a tough call of excluding him. Let’s add some context. When their squad was announced for the Pakistan Tri-series involving New Zealand, the knockout stages of the SA20 was underway.
Players centrally contracted with South Africa had an obligation to play in the SA20 knockouts. It 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, one of them being Breetzke. For the first two games, South Africa announced just a 12-member squad. Later, they were boosted by the arrivals of Heinrich Klaasen and Keshav Maharaj before their game against Pakistan on February 12.
A similar incident happened last year when Cricket South Africa announced a third-string side to play Tests in New Zealand.
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The knockout games of SA20 2025 took place between February 4 and February 8. Meanwhile, South Africa played all their games in the tri-series between February 8 and February 12.
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. Bavuma opened with de Zorzi against Pakistan on February 12. 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 early in his cricketing career. 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 at the domestic level. His time to shine on the big stage will come.
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