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‘I seriously can’t believe it,’ Rohit Sharma recalls IPL hat-trick against Mumbai Indians
During the 2009 IPL, Rohit dismissed Nayar, Harbhajan and Duminy off successive deliveries, winning the match for the Deccan Chargers.
More than 10 years after he claimed an IPL hat-trick, Rohit Sharma continues to struggle to wrap his head around it. Long before Rohit became the most successful captain in the IPL for the Mumbai Indians, the franchise had a connection with him they’d want to forget. In the 2009 IPL, when Rohit was part of the now-defunct Deccan Chargers, the batsman had grabbed a hat-trick against MI, which became part of a match-winning spell.
In match 32 of the second IPL, in centurion, Rohit had top-scored with 38 in Chargers’ total of 145. In reply, JP Duminy had steered MI well after a wobbly start. With the equation boiling down to 46 needed off 30, skipper Adam Gilchrist handed the ball to Rohit to bowl the 16th over. With six wickets in hand, and Duminy in fine touch, the match was MI’s for the taking. But Rohit’s unlikely hat-trick changed the course of the game and the Chargers sealed an improbable 19-run win.
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“I can’t believe that man, I seriously can’t believe that I took a hat-trick against MI while I was playing for Hyderabad (Deccan Chargers). I don’t even remember how i used to bowl then, I got a finger injury and after that I could not grip the ball properly and these days it’s better to stay away from bowling,” Rohit told Warner in a chat on Instagram Live.
Rohit cleaned up Abhishek Nayar and Harbhajan Singh off back-to-back deliveries and secured his hat-trick on the first ball of his next over, when he got the in-form Duminy out caught behind. It was the second split hat-trick of the IPL after Makhaya Ntini of South Africa did it against Kolkata Knight Riders in the first edition of the IPL.
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“If I think of it now, it’s quiet embarrassing that I took a hat-trick. They were decent batters as well, first one was JP Duminy, second one was Abhishek Nayar and third one was Harbhajan Singh (the original order being Nayar, Harbhajan and Duminy). I was pretty sure that he underestimated me, he just wanted to come and swing the bat, clean bowled,” the batsman recalled.
