Purple cap holder Harshal Patel took a breathtaking hat-trick against defending champions Mumbai Indians (MI) on Sunday to help Royal Challengers Bangalore win the match 39 of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2021) by 54 runs in Dubai. The RCB bowler dismissed Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard and Rahul Chahar in three successive balls in the 17th over to achieve this amazing feat. Patel broke the backbone of the MI batting line-up to put his team in the driver’s seat while defending a target of 166 runs. It started with Patel bowling a brilliant cutter to Pandya, who was caught by RCB skipper Virat kohli. The pacer then again bowled a cutter which snuck past Pollard’s flick and hit the stumps to give the bowler his second wicket in two deliveries.

Chahar was then given LBW to a ball that struck the pad right in front of the wickets. The third wicket saw Patel rejoice after completing a terrific hat-trick as MI were reduced to 106/8 in the 17th over.

This strengthened Harshal Patel’s position at the top of the wicket-taker’s list with 23 wickets in 10 games.

RCB now stand third in the points table with 12 points after six wins and four defeats.

Promoted

This is the 20th instance of  bowler taking a hat-trick in the IPL. The last hat-trick in the league was taken by Rajasthan Royals’ Shreyas Gopal in the 2019 edition against RCB.

Veteran leg-spinner Amit Mishra holds the record for the most hat-tricks in IPL, having achieved the feat thrice. Yuvraj Singh has taken two hat-tricks in the league.