Flashback: The only bowler to pick a hat-trick in his last match

While dominating Test cricket from the 1990s, Australia looked towards a variety of options to strengthen their ODI game. Post their loss in the 1996 World Cup final against Sri Lanka, the Aussies tried quite a few names to fix their line-up. This resulted in a lot of young names coming into the scene in the 50-over cricket. One such inclusion was Anthony Stuart during the 1996-97 Carlton United Series.

Australia started the tournament with successive wins against West Indies but followed it with back to back losses against Pakistan. For their 5th game of the tournament, the Aussies handed ODI debut to Anthony Stuart. The 27-year old made his professional debut in the 1994-95 season only and put on some good performances with the ball while representing New South Wales.

The hat-trick

It was the final league game against Pakistan at the MCG where Stewart made most of the new-ball. He provided early breakthroughs for Australia by dismissing Aamer Sohail and Zahoor Elahi. The NSW pacer did even more damage during his 6th over of the first spell.

Ijaz Ahmed was caught behind on the 3rd ball of the over and the dismissal was repeated on the following delivery with Mohammad Wasim being the batter this time. With a possibility of a hat-trick, Stuart steamed into Moin Khan and extracted the edge which was comfortably caught in the slips by their captain Mark Taylor. Thus, Anthony Stuart completed a hat-trick and went on to finish with the analyses of 10-1-26-5. Pakistan recovered from 29/5 to finish with a respectable 181/9 in the 50 overs.

Pakistan captain Wasim Akram led from the front with a 4-wicket haul but Michael Bevan’s unbeaten 79 helped Australia to register a consolation win. Anthony Stuart was named player of the match for his 5-wicket haul in what turned out to be his last ODI/International appearance. Stuart was unfortunately overlooked for the following ODI series at the end of March that year and eventually faded out of the domestic circuit due to his poor performances.