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Harshal Patel just loves bowling to Mumbai Indians, it seems. As he took a hat-trick against a team that he had bullied with a five-wicket haul in their previous encounter of the IPL 2021.
In that match, during IPL 2021's India leg, the 30-year-old clinched the match for Royal Challengers Bangalore with just 2 runs. The performance had a bit of a history attached to it as Patel became the first player to take a fifer against the five-time champions in a match. And on Sunday, Patel again scripted history by taking the first hat-trick of this season. He wreaked havoc in Dubai while bowling against the Rohit Sharma-led side in the Indian Premier League match no. 39. After going wicket-less in the first two overs of his spell, he returned in the 17th over to claim his first-ever hat-trick in the tournament. The match, which was all set to become a cliffhanger was turned into a lop-sided affair by Patel. He took the scalps of Hardik Pandya, followed by Kieron Pollard, and finally Rahul Chahar in the 17th over of the innings. Mumbai were well in the reckoning before Patel pulled off his heroics by coming up with a magical hat-trick when MI were 106/5 after 16 overs. Patel dismissed Hardik Pandya on the very first ball as RCB captain Virat Kohli caught a tough one in the covers. Hardik was beaten by the lack of pace. The delivery was 113.6 km/h. Patel bowled an off-cutter to Hardik, who miscued the shot as Kohli completed a fine catch. The big man from the Caribbean, Pollard, followed suit right on the next delivery as Patel struck his leg stump with a slow yorker (108.8 km/h). It angled in after pitching, and struck his leg stump since Pollard was already across his stumps. Mumbai's young spinner, Chahar, fell as Patel's third victim, dismissed lbw again with a well-disguised slower delivery. It was a third slower ball in a row (114.8 km/h), and it was dipping on to the batter to be a low full-toss on leg. Harshal knew it was out the moment he appealed, and the umpire raised his finger immediately too. For the record, Patel became the 17th bowler to take a hat-trick in the IPL. Amit Mishra has claimed a record three hat-tricks in IPL history, Yuvraj Singh bagged two, while 15 other bowlers, including Patel, have taken one each. By getting to 23 scalps, Patel is now the joint-highest wicket-taker by an uncapped player in the competition. He equaled the mark of Yuzvendra Chahal, who took 23 wickets for RCB in 2015. Sreenath Aravind (21 in 2011) and Siddarth Kaul (21 in 2018) are the other two uncapped players with 20-plus wickets in a season. Patel is also the third RCB bowler in IPL history to claim a hat-trick after Praveen Kumar (versus RR, Bengaluru 2010) and Samuel Badree (versus MI, Bengaluru 2017). --IANS Cs/bsk ( 505 Words) 2021-09-27-21:00:03 (IANS)
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