Hattrick!!

Well,

It is really good to see that WI fought back in mini world cup group match against Australia. Taylor's Hattrick in the 48th over really did the finishing touch. 52 runs required in 57 balls and you have six wickets in hand. For world champions it would have been a cake walk. And thats the beauty of cricket. And thats the beauty of matches between Australia vs WI.

Whatever be the condition of WI, they keep all internal problems aside when it comes to playing against Australia. Remember that fiary spell of Curtly Ambrose? He was greedy enough to take 7 wickets in a spell and miser enough to give away only one run. What a spell that was... which secured Australia the historic 1 run victory - closest ever in the test cricket history.

I love it when Brian Lara said he don't mind losing to minnows like Kenya (you remember Kenya beat WI in their debut world cup appearance). Lara considered Kenyan's as brothers. Hmmm...! Interesting right.

Well... coming back to the hattrick stuff... All Hattricks are memorable for me. Chetan Sharma's three clean bowled balls against Newzealand, Pathan's fiery first spell against Pakistan in Pakistan, Harbajan's turbunator heroism against Australians and many more. Though I don't want to give much credit about hattrick's against minnows, I really enjoy one of the feats among all the hattricks. Well... I am not talking about Wasim Akram's hattricks that he repeated the feat in the next test match (he is the first to take hattricks in two consecutive test matches)... I am talking about Chaminda Vaas Hattrick in World cup.

First ball of the innings against Bangladesh. Vaas bowls an excellent delivery, batsman completely missed to see the movement and ball goes between bat and pad to knock the offstump off. Second delivery to Ashraful ball stops at the batsman, he tries to push very hard and scoops in the air... easy catch for Vaas. Ashraful was in total confusion for a moment. He stayed there and even while walking back he looked like trying to memorize what has happened by looking at the pitch up and down. As expected SriLankan fielders came close for the third ball... three slips and a gully, forward short leg, short cover. Well this time the batsma edges to the third slip. Voila... Vaas creates a world record here. First over of an ODI and first three balls three wickets! Can you imagine?

Well the story doesn't stop here. Fourth ball was hit for four. Fifth was wide. And things looked like normal. Fifth ball pitched in between middle and leg batsman misses and ball hits his pad. Big shout and there goes the finger up!! Four wickets in the first over. Score was like 4/4. Good figure... isn't it?

Well... looking forward to see this kind of things happen in cricket history. I wish some other country gets test status by no. of votes as a criteria to give more and more fun like this.

Syam