All Bite, No Bark
The only way is up for Matthew Breetzke
Matthew Breetzke is ready for the big stage.
When the call came, Kirk Breetzke expected the invitation to the game to be extended to him. Kirk and Keith were lifelong friends who shared a love for cricket and rugby. Mark had two tickets for a match at St. George’s Park, but he had called to ask if he could take Matthew Breetzke with him instead. Young Matthew Breetzke was barely five years old and was already popular with his father’s friends.
He didn’t behave like kids his age at cricket matches. Most wanted to be on the grassbank playing their own version of the action on the field. Breetzke was known to sit studiously still, transfixed on the game. His only movement was often caressing the ball in his hand. Breetzke loved that ball, a shiny red cherry. He was four when he received it. It was a birthday gift. That’s all Breetzke wanted for his birthday: balls. Cricket balls, ping-pong balls, tennis balls, rugby balls, any form of ball. But he loved the cricket ball more than the rest.
Breetzke took that ball everywhere. To the shops, to church, on family vacations, to bed. At cricket matches, the ball seemed to be Breetzke’s connection with the players on the field. Breetzke would stand as close to the boundary rope as he was allowed with his ball in hand as he watched his brother, Chad, play school cricket. “A friend of ours had a box at St. George’s Park. He invited us to watch a match with him. He was amazed at how Matthew could sit still and pay attention to the game,” says Kirk Breetzke.
In 2005, Daniel Coyle met Carolyne Xie. Xie was eight and one of the top-ranked tennis players in the USA. She had a typical tennis prodigy's game, except for one thing. Instead of the usual two-handed backhand for that age, she hit one-handed backhands exactly like Roger Federer. Not a little bit like Federer but exactly like Federer, with that signature head-down, torero finish.
Xie and her coach did not work on the Federer backhand. He did not know how she had mastered it. Xie lived in a Federer-loving home. Her family had watched just about every televised match he'd ever played on tape. Carolyn in particular watched them whenever she could. In other words, in her short life, she had seen Roger Federer hit a backhand tens of thousands of times. She had watched the backhand and, without knowing, simply absorbed the essence of it.
“Imitation need not be conscious, and in fact, it often isn't,” Coyle wrote, echoing the work of tennis coach and author, W. Timothy Gallwey. When he was first teaching tennis in the 1960s, Gallwey decided to try an experiment: instead of talking to his beginner students, he would not speak a word, but simply show them how to hit. It worked surprisingly well, to the point that Gallwey was soon teaching fifty-year-old beginners to play passable games of tennis within twenty minutes without a single technical instruction.
By paying close attention to professional and older players like his brother, Breetzke developed a template of how the game was meant to be played. He developed a near-perfect technique before he was 10. “People couldn’t believe they were watching a kid whose exposure to cricket was backyard cricket and some coaching from his father and older brothers when they watched him playing for the Under-9s. He had high elbows and played with a straight bat,” says Kirk.
In his first match for Grey PE junior school’s first XI, Breetzke scored an unbeaten 154 runs.
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When Matthew Breetzke was six, his father hung a cricket ball from the rafters in a sock. This became Breetzke’s little world. He wielded his Woodworm bat, adorned with orange stickers, and imagined himself dispatching the ball to the boundary. Again and again and again, he punished imagined short-pitched deliveries. “He would hit the ball for hours. When we tried to stop him, Chad would tell us to leave the little man alone. ‘Let him be,’ he would tell us,” says Kirk.
When he was not standing up for his little brother, Chad Breetzke taught him everything he knew about cricket and threw him thousands of balls in the process. When he couldn’t, Kirk stepped in and threw a fair share of deliveries. When the Breetzke family went on holiday, the sons found ways to improvise cricket matches. As he grew older, Breetzke dialled back his rugby playing and added more time to cricket.
“He wasn't a particularly keen academic but certainly was above average. Most of his time was taken up with hitting balls so I'm not sure how much work got done at home! Cricket was certainly a big release for him from the classroom,” says Richard Gilbert, Breetzke’s first XI coach at Grey High PE.
Skill acquisition researchers have written studies that were echoed by Malcolm Gladwell in his cult favourite book, Outliers, stating that the hours of practice one puts in either pulls people together or pulls them apart. During his Grey High career, Breetzke practised four days a week to prepare for the weekend’s matches. Of these, two were spent training with the first team for three hours per session. The other two days are spent practising privately, also for two hours a time.
“The more balls he hit the better he felt. He would often ask for throws before practice or just go to train with Old Grey Cricket Club after practice,” says Gilbert.
Breetzke outstripped his age mates. He scored 90 on his Grey High first XI debut at 14. If there was anyone with reservations over Fred Swarbrook’s decision to have a 14-year-old boy open the batting against mostly-Under-19 players, they were converted by the end of the Grey High Cricket Festival, the tournament where Breetzke made his debut. Breetzke scored two half-centuries - one against a much-vaunted Durban Boys’ High attack. He ended the tournament as one of the top-five runs-scorers.
It did not take long for him to score his first century for the first XI, which came a few months later against Kingswood College. According to Gilbert, Breetzke loved batting so much that he detested getting out. As a result, he tried to cram in as many centuries into his Grey High career, many of them unbeaten.
Pup had arrived. His passable likeness to Michael Clarke and being the smallest and youngest player in the Grey High first XI team, earned him the sobriquet. Also, like Clarke, he had the dog in him. When the bigger, stronger and older bowlers tried to pin him down with short-pitched deliveries, Breetzke pulled with a panache that belied his age and size.
In 2017, Wouter Pienaar of the Potchefstroom Herald instructed readers: remember the name Matthew Breetzke.
Pienaar watched Breetzke execute the inside-out cover drives over cover, punish anything on off-stump, use power to smite the ball back over the bowler, and deftly guide the ball into gaps against English and Namibian attacks during the 2017 Triangular Series played at Potchefstroom. A future England star, Harry Brook, captained the England side and tormented bowlers, but not as much as Breetzke.
Breetzke top-scored with 192 runs at an average of 64. His best knock was a brilliant 101 against the English, where he looked like he was batting on a different pitch than his teammates. From the press box, Pienaar had seen what people in Gqeberha had witnessed for years. He hadn’t witnessed Breetzke score over 4500 runs for Grey High. The exact number is difficult to point out because of missing records. In his matric year, Breetzke averaged 100 with the bat.
Pienaar wasn’t in the stands when Breetzke broke the Grey High highest individual score when he walloped Selborne bowlers for 184 runs in 2016. He did so on the Graeme Pollock field. There was no better place to do it than on the field named after a legendary striker of the cricket ball.
Pienaar didn’t witness Breetzke’s retort after being overlooked for the SA Under-19 side for the second year running despite decimating schoolboy attacks. Breetzke let the bat do the talking for him. He scored back-to-back unbeaten tons against Paarl Boys’ High and Rondebosch at the Cape Schools week while the SA Under-19 coach watched from the stands.
“Against Rondebosch, he must have hit Daniel Moriarty (who now plays for Surrey and Yorkshire) over extra cover for four and six into their ditch over ten times,” says Gilbert.
Pienaar didn’t watch Breetzke’s best innings for Grey during Grey’s tour of the UK. Shrewsbury had two England Under-19 bowlers whom Breetzke took down with aplomb. With the help of his captain, David Masterson, Breetzke led Grey to a six-wicket win after an early wobble with the bat on a tough surface.
“We had no right to win. I think we only scored eight boundaries chasing 262. Breetzke scored a not-out hundred. Before the innings, I just asked him to prove to everyone what a good player he was, he didn't disappoint. Both of us and his friend who did the post-match presentation were actually quite emotional,” says Gilbert.
What Pienaar had also not witnessed was Breetzke’s bowling. There was a time when Breetzke was asked to open the bowling for Grey High with Lutho Sipamla. He did it all. There were matches where Breetzke batted, bowled and kept wicket. He was the ultimate all-rounder. Had Pienaar seen more of Breetzke’s Grey High career, he would have predicted that Breetzke would make an early debut for the Proteas.
The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding played on the stereotype that everyone is involved in everyone's business in Greek families. Well, all Yaya Demas, Breetzke's grandmother, knew everything about cricket and made sure she watched every game. She was invested in his cricket.
Kirk’s uncle, Uncle Pete, who battled Parkinson's for years was equally invested and attended every game he could when Breetzke played in East London. Like Yaya Demas, he was a big fan of Breetzke’s cricket. Uncle Pete was an avid follower of the game however Parkinson's just made him act differently. His presence at matches would have embarrassed any teenager but Breetzke was not perturbed.
One time, Breetzke scored an unbeaten ton for Grey. As he walked off the field, he noticed Uncle Pete hovering by the boundary rope, waiting to congratulate him. A mob of well-wishers separated them. People wanted to shake his hand, pat him on the back and say nice things. Breetzke shook many hands, smiled and patiently worked his way to his uncle. Uncle Pete smiled broadly as he had a word with Breetzke. “I told him afterwards that what he had done for Uncle Pete was bigger than the century he had just scored,” says Kirk.
He thrived because of Yaya Demas and Uncle Pete’s support and presence. After Yaya Demas was diagnosed with cancer, Breetzke faced the screen and gave a thumbs up to the camera whenever he reached a milestone in a televised match. Every milestone was dedicated to her. After she passed away, Breetzke adopted the number 85, her age when she passed away.
Breetzke’s relationships with his grandmother and uncle are a reflection of his relationships with other people. “He was well-liked by his peers,” says Richard Gilbert. Kirk Breetzke uses words like patient and considerate when talking about his son. On the field, he might be a pit bull, but off it, he is a cuddly pup.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS
