{"id":406238,"date":"2026-02-03T20:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T20:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/406238\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T20:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T20:58:08","slug":"matthew-breetzke-northants-overseas-batter-to-miss-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/406238\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Breetzke: Northants overseas batter to miss 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">South Africa batter Matthew Breetzke will not be returning to Northamptonshire this summer because of commitments elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Breetzke, who first played for the county in 2024 and scored 403 runs in last summer&#8217;s T20 Blast, had agreed a two-year all formats deal with the county.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He will, however, be playing in the Indian Premier League from March to May and could have other international and franchise calls afterwards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It has been decided that having an overseas player with full availability in the T20 Blast will be more beneficial to the team as we look to push towards another Finals Day appearance,&#8221; said a Northants statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;An overseas replacement for the T20 Blast will be announced in due course.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Breetzke, 27, has played two Tests, 12 one-dayers and 13 T20 internationals for South Africa since 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve really enjoyed the last two years with the Steelbacks but with the amount of cricket coming up, it wouldn&#8217;t be fair to return and not be there for all the games,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa batter Matthew Breetzke will not be returning to Northamptonshire this summer because of commitments elsewhere. Breetzke,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-406238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}