What Is a Hat-Trick in Cricket? Rules and Famous Hat-Tricks
A hat-trick in cricket is when a bowler takes three wickets with three consecutive deliveries. It is one of the rarest feats in the game.
What counts
- The three wickets must come from the bowler's own consecutive legal deliveries.
- All three dismissals must be credited to the bowler: bowled, caught, LBW, stumped or hit wicket. A run-out does not count.
- The deliveries can be spread across two overs, for example the last ball of one over and the first two of the bowler's next over.
- In a Test, a hat-trick can even span two innings of the same match.
A wide or no-ball in between does not break the sequence, because it is not a legal delivery.
Where the name comes from
The term began in cricket. In 1858, HH Stephenson took three wickets in three balls for an All-England XI, and a collection was taken to buy him a hat to mark the feat. The phrase later spread to football, hockey and other sports.
Famous hat-tricks
- Lasith Malinga took four wickets in four balls against South Africa at the 2007 World Cup, and did it again in a T20I against New Zealand in 2019.
- Chetan Sharma took the first World Cup hat-trick, for India against New Zealand in 1987.
- Irfan Pathan took a hat-trick in the first over of a Test, against Pakistan in Karachi in 2006.
- Stuart Broad and Wasim Akram are among the few bowlers with two Test hat-tricks.
Double hat-trick and four in four
Taking four wickets in four balls is sometimes called a double hat-trick, because it contains two overlapping sets of three. It has happened only a handful of times in international cricket.
Hat-tricks across formats
Hat-tricks are more common in T20 and ODI cricket than in Tests, because batters take more risks late in an innings. In T20 cricket, many come in the final over, when the batting side is swinging at almost every ball.
The football version is different: read our guide to the hat-trick in football. For other bowling records, see the cricket records page.