India left-arm spinner Kuldeep Yadav on Wednesday became the first Indian to take two hat-tricks in international cricket by scalping three wickets in consecutive balls during the second ODI against West Indies at the ACA-VDCA Stadium in Visakhapatnam.
Kuldeep’s hat-trick came in the 33rd over of the West Indies innings. His first victim was in-form opener Shai Hope (78), who was caught at the boundary ropes while attempting a sweep off the third ball of the over.
Yadav then got Jason Holder stumped out in the following delivery after beating him in flight with a googly and wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant doing the rest behind the stumps.
Kuldeep then bowled a wrong’un from around the stumps towards new batsman Alzarri Joseph. The ball took a thick outside edge and Kedar Jadhav did well to hold on to it at second slip.
Kuldeep had previously taken a hat-trick during the 2017 series against Australia at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. He also has a hat-trick to his name at the U-19 level for India.
“It has been a perfect day for me, taking a second hat-trick in ODIs. Still can’t find words to describe the feeling,” said Kuldeep after bagging the treble.
“It has been tough for me in the last 4-5 months. I have worked hard and been bowling well, it was a very satisfying performance. There was not a lot of turn on offer but we had 380 runs and we knew they would come hard,” he added.
After taking two wickets in consecutive balls, Kuldeep said he got confused about which one to bowl on the hat-trick delivery.
“I was just varying my pace. I was a bit confused as to which one to bowl; whether to bowl the chinaman or wrong ‘un, I went for the wrong ‘un and put an extra fielder at slip (on the hat-trick ball),” said the bowler.