The match at the Eden Gardens was one to savour. India managed to win the game comfortably in the end and a major chunk of the credit must surely go to the hattrick that Kuldeep Yadav picked up.
He bowled tree beautiful deliveries to get rid of Matthew Wade, Ashton Agar and Pat Cummins. His ball to dismiss Cummins was an absolute beauty that would have gotten any international batsman out, let alone a lower-middle order bowler.
En route to getting his hat-trick, Yadav broke a few records which he now holds and will probably do so for a long time:
1) Kuldeep Yadav is the first Indian spinner to grab a hat-trick in ODI cricket.
2) Kuldeep Yadav’s hat-trick means that he is only the third Indian ever to have achieved this feat after Kapil Dev and Chetan Sharma.
3) Kuldeep Yadav is the fourth player to take a hat-trick both at the U-19 level and the senior level The other players who have done the same include Abdul Razzaq, Jermaine Lawson and Damien Fleming.
4) Kuldeep Yadav became the seventh spinner to take a hat-trick in ODIs. The last one was Sri Lanka’s Wanidu Hasaranga, who took one against Zimbabwe earlier this year.
5) Kuldeep Yadav is also the only spinner in history to pick a hat-trick against the Australians in One Day International (ODI) cricket.
Yadav’s hat-trick was certainly the turning point in the game after Pandya had gotten Smith out. This performance will certainly be a boost for the Indian cricketers who will now take a short rest before heading to Nagpur to play the third ODI where they will look to wrap up the series. The bowling unit have been excellent and have proven that India deserves to be the number one ranked team in the world.
By Rohit Nair
