Darren Gough, Australia v England, Sydney Cricket Ground, 2 January 1999
I was in my seat at the SCG more than two hours before play started, my expression that of a Seventh Day Adventist on the morning of the second coming. After so many years of early alarms to tune into a crackling McGilvray, how wonderful it was to actually be there.
And how magnificent
for a day’s cricket to be worth the 30-year wait. A partnership of 190 between
the Waugh twins would have been the highlight of almost any other day. Mark got
a century, but for once the usually more artisan Steve outdid his brother in
silkiness of stroke.
Dean Headley dismissed
three of Australia’s top four. Peter Such skipped around the field, knowing
that there would not be many more test matches for him (just one as it turned
out), and set on enjoying himself while he could.
Some spectators
left a few overs before the end, replete with the sort of joy that only a good
day’s test cricket can bring. Their way of making their day perfect was to get
an early bus, or avoid the queues at the train station.
As, with a
self-satisfied smirk, they bought their ticket, Darren Gough completed the
first hat trick taken by an England bowler in the Ashes in a hundred years.
Watch
to see what magnificent fast bowling it was. Quick enough late in the day to produce
bounce and enough movement into Ian Healy to make his attempted cut shot the
wrong choice. An easy catch for the keeper (three guesses who that was, by the
way: answer below).
Next, a perfect
yorker to take Stuart Macgill’s middle stump.
Colin Miller,
expecting the same, barely raised his bat, planting if firmly in front of
middle. Gough was cleverer and better, coaxing enough away swing to clatter the
off stump. Up in the Churchill Stand, how we stood and cheered.
My friends, unless
you want to live an old age blighted with remorse and regret, never leave a
cricket match before the last ball is bowled.
The keeper was
Warren Hegg. Remember him? Thought not.
Simon
Doull, Northern Districts v Auckland, Cricket Max, Rex Morpeth
Park, Whakatane, 2 November 2000
Cricket Max was
Martin Crowe’s idea. Then a Sky TV executive, Crowe spotted a gap in the
leisure market and TV schedules that three hours’ cricket could fill. This was six
years before T20 began in England, with the ECB’s marketing people taking the
credit.
But, as he tended
to do as a captain from time to time, Crowe overthought a good idea and made it
a bit too complicated for its own good. Instead of two 20-over innings, there
were four of ten overs. And there was the Max Zone between long off and long
on. If the ball entered or passed over the zone, runs scored were doubled.
The CricInfo feature that
introduced the competition reminds me that there were other superfluous
embellishments, though many of these had been dropped by the time I arrived in
Whakatane, on the sunny Bay of Plenty coast, to cover the game in question.
Every New Zealand
town has a space like Rex Morpeth Park, often several of them. A pleasant,
tree-lined space with a functional dressing room and bar area. No media area
though. Thus it was that I delivered my first-ever live reports for CricInfo—my
account of each ten-over innings published on-line within a couple of minutes
of its conclusion—from the middle of the hospitality area—sausage rolls and
lamingtons so near yet so far—viewing the action through a sort of enlarged
letter box.
Simon Doull’s hat trick
was spread over two innings, which some would argue means that it wasn’t a
proper hat trick at all. The record books contain several such examples
however, so it counts as one of my seven. Forgive me for being sufficiently self-regarding as to quote my own account of the event from my end-of-match summary:
He removed Lou Vincent and Kyle Mills with the last two balls of the fourth over of the first innings, completing the hat-trick with the first ball of the second over of the second innings when James Marshall took a good catch to dismiss Llorne Howell.
You might at this
point think that you would like to know more, and should consult those live reports.
Well, you can’t as they have disappeared from the CricInfo archives. This is
just as well, as you would search for mention of the hat trick in vain.
You see, nobody
noticed that a hat trick had been taken until Northern Districts’ splenetic scorer
Bill Andersson audited his score book at the end of the game. Simon Doull was
as surprised as anybody. Max exaggerated one of the deficiencies of quick
cricket: it moves like a bullet train, too fast to take in everything that is
interesting as you look out of the window.
“Unique” is one of
the most overworked and abused words in the language, but I would say with a
high degree of confidence that Doull’s achievement that day of a hat trick and
king pair all within three hours justifies its deployment.
By the way, Bill
Andersson (still ND’s scorer today) was one reason why covering ND for a few summers
was so much fun. He had the people skills and vocabulary of a sergeant major. In
the press box we used to compete to see how many swear words we could elicit
from him in response to an innocently phrased statistical enquiry. If memory
serves, the record was thirteen.
So those are my
seven hat tricks. There have been no more these fifteen years. Not even the
remarkable 2014/15 season could produce one. My first visit to the Basin this
season is imminent, so here’s hoping.
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