Source: Radio New Zealand
Brent Randell, who has taken five wickets in five balls, known as a triple hat-trick. www.photosport.nz
Central Stags pace bowler Brett Randell has achieved a cricketing rarity, taking five wickets in consecutive balls, which has been described a “triple hat-trick”.
New Zealand Cricket statistician Francis Payne said Randell becomes the first player in first class cricket history to take five wickets in five balls – and the first to take six wickets in eight balls. His deed of seven wickets in 12 balls has been bettered just once.
The 30-year-old’s feat came in the Stags’ Plunket Shield match today against Northern Districts at McLean Park in Napier.
He eventually finished with seven for 25, which is the second best in Central Districts history, betterd only by left arm spinner Bryan Yuile’s nine for 100 in 1966.
“I’m pretty blown away,” Randell told the NZC website.
“The high was pretty crazy, it was like a pinch-me moment.
“I was trying to stay level-headed and keep putting the ball in the same area and then after the actual hat-trick, just the same things – trying to put the ball in the same area.
“It gets drummed into us a lot that we don’t want to go searching for wickets, so I was trying to just keep bowling the same ball, and our “Plan A” that we’d talked about, and it came off.
“I had no idea that it was the first time it [five wicket in five balls in first-class cricket] had happened in the world, it’s seriously cool. I mean, I don’t really have any words at the moment, to be honest. I’ll take it.”
The Stags had scored 373 in their first innings and thanks to Randell dismissed Northern for just 82. Central enforced the follow-on and at stumps in their second innings Northern were five for 152, with Randell this time wicketless.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
