Having dismissed Andrew Symonds and Venugopal Rao off the first two balls of the 14th over, Yuvraj Singh set an attacking field for newcomer D Ravi Teja. However, the batsman hit the slow full-toss through cover for two, much to the disappointment of Yuvraj, who thought he’d missed out on his second hat-trick in the IPL. What the left-arm spinner did miss, though, was the fact that he had already got it — the left-arm spinner had removed Herschelle Gibbs off the last ball of his previous over.

“Actually I didn’t realise at all that I had got a hat-trick. I got a slip in place and silly point and then bowled a bad ball. It was only later that I read it on the screen that I have got a hat-trick,” said Yuvraj after the match.

It wasn’t for the first time in the Indian Premier League that a bowler failed to notice he had got a hat-trick. Chennai Super Kings’ Makhaya Nitini got one against Kolkata Knight Riders when he thought he’d missed it. Interestingly, Yuvraj’s last hat-trick, too, came in the same manner — he dismissed Bangalore’s Robin Uthappa off the last ball of his previous over and then got the wickets of Jaques Kallis and Mark Boucher in the next. The only difference — Kings XI ended up on the winning side this time. “It was good to get a hat-trick second time, it sounds unbelievable but that’s a fact,” Yuvraj said.

‘Lucky touch’

... contd.