Flashback: The only currently active bowler to take two hat-tricks in a match
One of the dreams of any bowler in the game of cricket is to pick a hat-trick in the match. But there are very few bowlers in world cricket who have done this. There have been some bowlers who managed to take a hat-trick in the World Cup as well. But today we are going to discuss a current player who registered his name in history by taking a hat-trick twice in a single match.
So far in the world of cricket, this has happened only 8 times when a bowler has taken a hat-trick twice in the same match. In the year 1884, A. Shaw did it for the first time, while playing in county cricket. Speaking of the current bowlers, this feat is in the name of Australian fast bowler Mitchell Starc. He achieved it in the 2017–18 Sheffield Shield match between New South Wales and Western Australia.
Mitchell Starc was part of the New South Wales team in this match, in which his team was invited to bat first. In the first innings, half of the team had returned to the pavilion by the score of 150. But Mitchell Starc made an important contribution for the team with the bat, scoring 43 runs in 61 balls, which helped the New South Wales team to score 270 runs.
Talking about bowling, youngster Josh Hazlewood was present in the New South Wales team to support Starc. Due to their lethal attack, Western Australia’s wickets kept falling at frequent intervals. By the score of 145, the Western Australia team had lost 7 wickets. After this, a 31-run partnership between Behrendorf and Bancroft was made for the 8th wicket. The pair was broken by Mitchell Starc who sent Behrendorff to the pavilion on a personal score of 20.
After this, on the next 2 balls of the over, Starc made Moody and Mackin his victim, wrapping up the first innings of Western Australia, while also completing a hat-trick.
New South Wales got a good lead in the first innings, and the team declared the second innings at the score of 300, giving Western Australia a target of 395 runs to win the match. Achieving this was not an easy task but the opening batsmen of Western Australia changed the story of the entire match by sharing 179 runs for the first wicket.
But once Shaun Marsh’s wicket fell, New South Wales bowlers again appeared to dominate. After which Western lost 7 wickets till the score of 218. Now Mitchell Starc again took the responsibility of helping the team, completing a hat-trick in the 77th over of the Western Australian innings. For the team, he played an important role in getting a big win of 171 runs in the match.
