Breetzke is no stranger to breaking records ©Getty
“D’you know, when we introduce ourselves in the Eastern Cape,” someone who shares a last name with Matthew Breetzke said, “people take a backward step.” They do, and there’s a good reason why – the Breetzkes have a reputation for throwing punches first and wondering why they did later, if at all.
Matthew Breetzke is from the Eastern Cape, like many of his clan. South Africa has the highest concentration in the world of Breetzkes, who came to the country from eastern Europe. Their name might be derived from Brietzke, a town in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Or it might take its meaning from an Old German term that translates as “short and broad”.
At 1.83 metres, Breetzke could hardly be called short. But there is a muscular broadness about him. He uses it, along with a bat, and rather than his fists, to land his blows.
Like he did at Lord’s on Thursday, where his 77-ball 85 made him the only man of all the 2,968 who have taken guard in ODIs to pass 50 in their first five innings.
Breetzke is no stranger to breaking records. After four of those trips to the crease, he had already scored more runs than anyone who had batted five times. His 150 in a Tri-Nations Trophy match against New Zealand in Lahore in February displaced the great Desmond Haynes’s 148 against Australia in Antigua in February 1978 as the highest score by an ODI debutant.
“It’s a bit worrying, because it can only go downhill from here,” Breetzke told a press conference with a levelheaded chuckle.
How did it feel to be starring in a side who some might have thought would be struggling to recover from the international retirement of Heinrich Klaasen in June, and the absence of David Miller, who has been busy in The Hundred, which ended on Sunday?
“I haven’t thought about those other guys. It’s just been going well.”
People from the Eastern Cape tend to be unvarnished. They come at the world with a bracing directness and a clear-eyed lack of pretence. Breetzke is, in the best way, a prime example. That can only help him as a cricketer in a modern game cluttered with all manner of distraction.
Maybe this quality also explains Breetzke’s success, partly at least. Because it’s less about how many runs he has scored than how he scores them. If anyone anywhere in the game hits the ball harder, they would be in trouble with the police.
Breetzke reaps most of his runs square on both sides of the wicket, but he is also devastating down the ground. His three most memorable strokes on Thursday were examples of the latter.
The first, hit off a ball bowled to him by Jacob Bethell in the 27th, was sent arching high over extra cover for six. Seven overs later, Breetzke hoisted Will Jacks straight and true – lifting his back leg and holding the pose – for another half-dozen. In the 39th, Breetzke hammered Jacks so violently that the non-striker, Tristan Stubbs, needed all of his athleticism to get out of the way of the ball screaming at him.
Breetzke and Stubbs put on 147 off 126 for the fourth wicket to set up South Africa’s 330/8, the second-highest total in the 71 ODIs played at Lord’s and the most runs yet piled up against England there.
The home side needed the highest successful chase at Lord’s to win, and fell six runs short. They improved significantly from their car crash of a performance at Headingley on Tuesday, when they were shot out for 131 and lost by seven wickets. But better wasn’t good enough to stop South Africa from sealing the series with a game to spare.
This is the South Africans’ seventh bilateral ODI series in England, and just their second win – more than 27 years after the first in May 1998. Moreover, only in Sri Lanka, where they have won just a dozen of their 32 ODIs, do South Africa have a worse record in the format than in England.
So this victory, which follows an ODI series win in Australia last month, is another plaudit for a man who wore sunglasses to hide his tear-reddened eyes in the bright sunshine that bathed South Africa’s win over Australia in the WTC final at Lord’s in June.
Breetzke concurred: “It starts at the top with Shukri Conrad. The selections he’s making and the direction he’s wanting to go with the team [means] he’s very clear on what he wants. There’s no sort of grey area, so the guys are feeling comfortable where and they know where they stand. Winning the WTC final has just bred a different sort of confidence in this changeroom.”
Unlike Breetzke, Stubbs was part of that triumph. His 58 on Thursday – only his second half-century in 17 innings across the formats – ended in a horrible mix-up with Dewald Brevis and his consequent runout.
Stubbs is also from the Eastern Cape. Mention of his last name does not cause alarm, but he and Breetzke share more than partnerships. Stubbs is the junior of the pair by a year, nine months and a dozen days. They were contemporaries at Grey High School in Gqeberha. The boys’ only school is firmly in South Africa’s Ivy League, having produced Graeme and Peter Pollock, and Siya Kolisi, who has twice captained the Springboks to rugby World Cup glory.
Doubtless Stubbs knew all that even before he was a Grey boy. But he breathed the same rarefied air there as heroes like Breetzke – who cracked the nod for the school’s first XI when he was 14, and was in South Africa’s under-19 team two years later. Yet varnish still won’t stick to him.
“I try to take every opportunity I get and make the most of it,” Breetzke said. “It doesn’t last forever.”
So, he didn’t say, there’s no point taking a backward step.
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