Ireland's pacer Josh Little bagged the second hat-trick of the ongoing 2022 T20 World Cup during their final Super 12 match of the tournament against New Zealand on Friday, November 4. He completed the feat in the 19th over of the match, joining UAE'S Karthik Meiyappan as only the second bowler to take a hat-trick in the T20 World Cup, and the sixth in the history of the competition.
New Zealand were going strong courtesy of their skipper's 61 off 35 balls and were targeting at least 200 runs but Josh Little had other plans, taking the wicket of Kane Williamson, and then James Neesham and Mitchell Santner, to completely neutralise the New Zealand batting.
Little is the second Irish bowler to bag a hat-trick after Curtis Campher, who achieve this feat against the Netherlands in the 2021 T20 World Cup. In that match, Campher took the wickets of Colin Ackermann, Ryan ten Doeschate, Scott Edwards and Roelof van der Merwe.
He is also the sixth bowler to take a hat-trick in the T20 World Cup, joining Brett Lee from the 2007 World Cup, and Wanindu Hasaranga, Campher, Kagiso Rabada and Meiyappan.
Meiyappan's hat-trick came against Sri Lanka.
Earlier, Williamson batted at a strike rate of more than 100 for the first time in this tournament and got fluent as his innings progressed. His knock comprised five fours and three sixes.
The other notable contributions came from opener Finn Allen (32 off 18), the in-form Glenn Phillips (17 off 9) and Daryl Mitchell (31 not out off 21).
Left-arm pacer Little put the brakes on the New Zealand scoring rate in the death overs with his hat-trick.
While Williamson was caught in the deep attempting another big hit, Little trapped Neesham and Santner in front of the stumps with two straight deliveries that skidded on.
