Matthew Breetzke: Proteas Batter, ODI Debut Record and the Steve Smith Catch

One catch can make a cricketer famous for a week. On 23 October 2026, “matthew breetzke catch steve smith” was one of the biggest searches in South Africa, with more than 10,000 searches logged by Google Trends. The catch came during the second Test against Australia, which the Proteas went on to win by an innings to level the three-match series, according to SuperSport, Sky Sports and Cricinfo.

For cricket followers, though, Breetzke was already a familiar name. In early 2025 he set a world record on his One Day International debut, and he has since become a regular in South Africa’s white-ball sides. This profile covers his path from Gqeberha to the national team, using published match records and reporting.

Quick facts

• Full name: Matthew Paul Breetzke
• Born: 3 November 1998, Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha), South Africa
• School: Grey High School, Gqeberha
• Role: Right-handed top-order batter
• Domestic team: Eastern Province (since 2017)
• International debuts: T20I in 2023, Test in 2024, ODI in 2025
• Record: Highest score by a batter on ODI debut, 150 against New Zealand (February 2025)

Eastern Cape roots

Breetzke grew up in Port Elizabeth and went to Grey High School, one of the best-known cricket schools in the Eastern Cape. The province has a long cricket history, and St George’s Park, the city’s Test ground, is one of the oldest Test venues in the world. Breetzke came up through that system and played age-group cricket for the region.

He made his first-class debut for Eastern Province in February 2017, in the Sunfoil 3-Day Cup, while still a teenager. His List A debut came three days later, and his first Twenty20 match that September in the Africa T20 Cup. In December 2017 he was picked for South Africa’s squad for the 2018 Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand.

A long wait for the national team

For several seasons after that, Breetzke was the kind of player selectors watch rather than pick. He was named in Cricket South Africa’s emerging squads in 2018 and again in 2021, when the emerging side toured Namibia. He played for the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants in the 2019 Mzansi Super League and kept piling up runs in domestic cricket for Eastern Province.

His senior international debut finally came in September 2023, in a T20 international against Australia at home. He played two more T20Is against India that December and went with the T20 squad to the West Indies in May 2024. His Test debut came in October 2024 in Bangladesh. It was a quiet start: he was out for a duck in his only innings of the match.

The record-breaking ODI debut

The innings that changed his career came on 10 February 2025 in Lahore. South Africa were playing New Zealand in a tri-series in Pakistan before the Champions Trophy, and several senior players were unavailable. Breetzke, on his ODI debut, made 150. That beat the record for the highest score by a batter on ODI debut, held by the West Indies’ Desmond Haynes, who made 148 against Australia in 1978.

Two days later he made 83 against Pakistan, which gave him the most runs by any batter after their first two ODI innings. In a format with more than fifty years of history, setting two records in one week as a newcomer was remarkable, and it put him straight into the conversation for the main ODI team.

Consistency in Australia

The question after a start like that is whether a player can keep it up. In August 2025, on tour in Australia, Breetzke made 88 off 78 balls in the second ODI at the Great Barrier Reef Arena in Mackay. It was his fourth score of fifty or more in his first four ODI innings. No batter had started an ODI career that way before, and it went past the previous best start, India’s Navjot Singh Sidhu, who had four fifties in his first five matches.

South Africa won that match by 84 runs and took the series 2-1. A month later he was named in the T20I squad to tour Pakistan, and he was given the ODI captaincy for that tour while regular captain Temba Bavuma was unavailable. Being handed that responsibility within a year of his ODI debut showed how much trust the selectors had in him.

The catch and the 2026 Test series

The 2026 home Test series against Australia has drawn huge interest in South Africa, partly because the Proteas are the reigning World Test champions. Speaking after the second Test, captain Temba Bavuma told Cricinfo that “everyone wants to have a go at us” now that South Africa hold that title.

Breetzke’s catch to remove Steve Smith, one of the best Test batters of his generation, was one of the moments of the match. Clips of it spread quickly on social media, which explains the huge spike in searches. South Africa then finished the job on the final day, with Kagiso Rabada and Wiaan Mulder taking the last wickets to win by an innings and level the series with one Test to play.

How he plays

Commentators usually describe Breetzke as a busy, positive top-order batter who likes to keep the scoreboard moving. His early ODI record shows he can turn a start into a big innings, and he has kept doing it against strong attacks. In Test cricket his record is still being built, and how he does over the rest of this series and the next season will shape where he fits in the long-format side.

A product of the Eastern Province system

Breetzke’s story says something about how South African cricket develops players outside its biggest centres. Eastern Province is not one of the wealthiest unions in the country, and many promising players from the region have moved to larger franchises in search of opportunity. Breetzke has stayed with his home province since his first-class debut, and his rise has been followed closely in Gqeberha, where Grey High School and St George’s Park are both points of local pride.

His path also shows how patient South African selectors can be. Nearly six years passed between his Under-19 World Cup selection and his first full international cap. In that time he played emerging-squad tours, franchise T20 cricket and a heavy load of domestic matches. When the chance finally came in ODI cricket, he was 26 and already an experienced professional, which may help explain how calm he looked on debut.

What comes next

The immediate focus is the final Test against Australia, with the series level. Beyond that, South Africa’s international calendar includes more white-ball cricket, and Breetzke’s ODI record makes him a strong contender to keep his place at the top of the order. Test cricket is the bigger test. His early record in the longest format is short, and the selectors will want to see more long innings before treating him as a fixture there.

Whatever happens next, he has already earned a place in the record books. The highest score on ODI debut is a record that may stand for many years.

Career timeline

• 2017: First-class, List A and T20 debuts for Eastern Province.
• 2018: Plays in the Under-19 World Cup squad; named in the CSA emerging squad.
• 2019: Nelson Mandela Bay Giants in the Mzansi Super League.
• 2023: T20 international debut against Australia.
• 2024: Test debut against Bangladesh.
• 2025: 150 on ODI debut, a world record; four fifty-plus scores in his first four innings; stand-in ODI captain in Pakistan.
• 2026: Part of the Test side that beats Australia in the second Test.

What we could not verify

• His exact runs in the second Test, and the final details of the catch. We have relied only on match reports, not on clips.
• Whether he will play in the third Test. The squad had not been confirmed when we wrote this.
• Any franchise contracts for the 2027 season, which had not been announced.
• Details of his private life and earnings, which we do not publish.

Sources

• SuperSport
• Sky Sports
• ESPNcricinfo
• Cricket South Africa
• International Cricket Council
• Wikipedia