Street-smart Breetzke at the top of SA’s middle order competition - TimesLIVE

When David Miller walked past Matthew Breetzke after being dismissed for nine, he told the young tyro, “keep going, keep playing your game”.

Breetzke was on 76 at the time, batting fluently, and as he revealed later, wanted to begin taking risks.

Besides Ryan Rickleton, who made 27 off 26 balls, none of the Proteas’ frontline batters came to terms with a surface which was sticky early and assisted the Australian seamers.

But Breetzke had quickly found a rhythm and was dominating at his end, while more experienced players like Temba Bavuma and Miller struggled.

The pressure was starting to build again when Miller miscued a delivery from Nathan Ellis, with the bowler adjusting well to take a catch as the ball came back at him.

Miller, who is in competition with Breetzke and others for a middle-order spot in the Proteas ODI team, understood that his much-less-experienced teammate might have felt the need to take the load all on himself for the rest of the innings — hence the reminder to stick to what was working.

At 168/5, when Miller was dismissed, there were still 16 overs left, and the innings and match were very much in the balance.

“There were a few stages where I wanted to take a few risks, but we kept losing wickets,” said Breetzke.

Over the course of 15 ODIs, he’s already demonstrated how well he reads a match situation.

Last year in Mackay, Australia, SA were 23/2 when he started his innings, finishing with 88 to help his side reach 277.

At Lord’s Last September, he was named player of the match, this time after scoring 85, also at a time when the Proteas innings could have slipped away.

Instead, they scored 330/8 and beat England by five runs.

In the first ODI at Kingsmead on Thursday, he walked to the crease with SA 29/2.

“It was tricky up front,” he admitted. SA reached 297/8 and won by 67 runs.

The first of many interventions by Marco Jansen proved pivotal, but also illustrated Breetzke’s nous.

“It was a special innings from Marco. He helped me a lot. I could just feed him the strike. He got a few away early on, although that wasn’t the plan for him.

“We fed off each other’s games. It changed the momentum of our innings.”

Breetzke celebrated his second century by thrusting his arms in the air and sprinting around the middle of Kingsmead.

“Any century you get for your country is an emotional moment and a proud one for me and my family. When I got to the century mark, it was a bit of relief.

It was the eighth time in 14 innings that he’d passed at least 50, and Thursday saw him surpass Pakistan’s Imam Ul-Haq’s previous record of 759 runs after 14 ODI innings. Breetzke is on 822, and in three matches against the Australians, he’s always scored at least 50.

Those figures certainly put him at the head of the pack, who are chasing middle-order spots for next year’s World Cup squad.

Miller, Tristan Stubbs and Dewald Brevis are all in the running, while the inclusion of Rickelton at no 5 on Thursday adds an intriguing dynamic to that mini-competition.

If Rickelton gets more opportunities in that spot and proves successful, his versatility might be too hard for the selectors to ignore.

Jansen’s third half-century again highlighted his value and, combined with his bowling and, of course, fielding, showed that his embracing a greater leadership role wasn’t mere talk last week.

He accelerated the scoring rate in a timely fashion, relieving Breetzke of some of the pressure he was under, then claimed the key wicket of Travis Head despite not being at his best with the ball and grabbed four catches, the third of which came from the realm of fantasy to dismiss Matt Renshaw and put a virtual seal on the outcome.

“I just told myself, ‘dive and see what you can do’. Luckily I got there,” said Jansen.