30 Balls Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Three wickets in three consecutive balls constitutes a hattrick. Those balls do not need to be in the same over, nor the same innings... just so long as they occur in the same match. This, in turn, has led to some very unusual hattricks.

Fred Spofforth became not only the first Australian, but the first man to take a Test match hattrick. A fast bowler, nicknamed "The Demon", he took his three wickets against England in a Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in 1879. At the time of writing this quiz (July, 2025) Scott Boland became the 45th man, and the 10th Australian, to achieve this rare feat.

As you can see, taking a hattrick is not an easy assignment and many of the finest bowlers the game has seen have not managed to achieve this distinction. Imagine then how significant taking a second hattrick in Tests would be. Four men have managed this and two of those are Australians. The first of those was Hugh Trumble, a tall off-spinner, who dismissed three Englishmen at the MCG in 1902 and repeated the dose to the same country, at the same venue two years later. The one that was extra special was the achievement of leg-spinner Jimmy Matthews. Not only did he take two hattricks, he took both in the same Test match. The Test was against South Africa during the triangular series (involving three nations) played in England in 1912. Poor Tommy Ward, the South African wicketkeeper, must have of tired of the sight of Matthews... he was the bowler's third victim in both innings of that match.

Merv Hughes, in December of 1988 at the WACA ground in Perth, Western Australia, could lay claim to one of the most unusual hattricks at any level of cricket. Remarkably, he took a wicket in three consecutive deliveries spread over three different overs. Here's how it happened. He dismissed West Indian batsman Curtly Ambrose with the last ball of an over. With the first ball of his next over he dismissed Patrick Patterson. That dismissal signaled the end of the West Indies' first innings. With his first ball of the West Indies' second innings he bowled out Gordon Greenidge to complete the feat.

The last of the unusual ones that I should highlight was Peter Siddle's hattrick against England at the Brisbane Cricket Ground in November 2010. His last victim in that set was England's opening bowler Stuart Broad. Nine months later, Broad would become the next man in Test cricket to take a hattrick.

Mention should also be made of Lindsay Kline. He took his hattrick against South Africa in January of 1958. Among that list of 45 men, he is the only left-arm wrist-spinner among them.

This quiz has focused on the men who have taken hattricks in Tests and missing from the list are the women. It would be remiss of me not to mention them. The first women's Test match was between England and Australia, in Brisbane in 1934. Their (women's) frequency of Tests is significantly less than that of the men with their main focus being on the shorter version of the game i.e. One Day Internationals (ODIs) and T20 matches. As a consequence their list of hattrick takers sits only three deep (at the time of writing). Of those, two are Australians. In 1958, Australian off-spinner Betty White became the first woman to take a Test match hattrick. She was followed by Pakistan's Shaiza Khan in 2004 and Australian fast bowler, Rene Farrell in 2011.