Adelaide (The Hawk): Josh Little, a left-arm pacer for Ireland, recorded the second hat trick of the Men's T20 World Cup, which is now taking place in Australia. Little's performance came against New Zealand on Friday in their Group 1 encounter at Adelaide Oval.
When Little dismissed skipper Kane Williamson, James Neesham, and Mitchell Santner in quick succession to become just the second Ireland bowler to take a hat-trick in T20 World Cups after his teammate Curtis Campher did so last year in Abu Dhabi, New Zealand was cruising at 174/3 in the 19th over and appeared set to cross 200+.
Little's consecutive favourable lbw rulings on the last two deliveries of the over gave him the improbable victory after Williamson pulled straight to the fielder in the deep to leave for 61.
With his 3/22 against New Zealand, Little concluded the T20 World Cup with an incredible 11 kills. The 23-year-old finished with a total of 7/59 from 11 overs against the Kiwis, England, and Australia.
"I guess it was a little bit of a tail back into the left-handers, wanting to execute it twice in a row, and I got lucky to have achieved it," the speaker speculated. In the mid-innings chat with the broadcasters, Little observed, "I think I was a little short early on, then I went a little greedy and went full.
In the opening round of the competition, against the Netherlands, Campher completed an even more exceptional double hat-trick by taking the wickets of Colin Ackermann, Ryan ten Doeschate, Scott Edwards, and Roelof van der Merwe.
Six hat-tricks have now been recorded at T20 World Cups overall, with two of them occurring at the current tournament in Australia. As his team lost against Sri Lanka in Geelong in the opening round of the T20 World Cup in Australia, UAE leg-spinner Karthik Meiyappan recorded the tournament's first hat-trick.
(Inputs from Agencies)