One over, five wickets: Indian quick achieves rare T20 feat
India’s out-of-favour quick Abhimanyu Mithun achieved the rare feat of claiming five wickets in one over, during a domestic T20 game.
A month after he took a hat-trick on his birthday (a la Peter Siddle) in a List A game, Mithun claimed another three-in-three. He extended it to five wickets in the seven-ball over, finishing with 5-39 for Karnataka against Haryana in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, BCCI’s domestic T20 competition, in Surat, on Friday, November 29.
According to ESPNcricinfo, only Al-Amin Hossain, Bangladesh’s current Test and T20I quick, has managed the same feat, during a domestic T20 game in Bangladesh in 2013.
WATCH: W, W, W, W, WD, 1, W – @imAmithun_264’s five-wicket final over. ????https://t.co/XnGPYu4GON#HARvKAR @paytm #MushtaqAliT20 pic.twitter.com/w1ij1xJlT0
— BCCI Domestic (@BCCIdomestic) November 29, 2019
Bowling the final over of the innings, Mithun claimed the wickets of Himanshu Rana, Rahul Tewatia, Sumit Kumar and Amit Mishra off four consecutive deliveries, before snaring Jayant Yadav off the final delivery of the over. With batsmen looking for quick runs, all five dismissals were caught, four of which came with the score on 192.
Interestingly, Mithun also became the first Indian bowler to claim a hat-trick in all three formats: before his Surat spell and the List A hat-trick last month, he had picked up three consecutive wickets during the 2009/10 Ranji Trophy, his debut season.
Right after that season, he earned his maiden call-up for India as a 20-year-old, and played four Tests and five ODIs between 2010 and 2011, on either side of the 2011 World Cup win. A bustling pacer with a good build, Mithun has also featured in 16 games of the IPL, 12 of which came in 2011, when he was part of Royal Challengers Bangalore.
His stunning spell comes with the shadow of spot-fixing looming over Karnataka cricket; the 30-year-old was recently quizzed by the Central Crime Branch, becoming the first international player to be questioned by the police over the Karnataka Premier League scandal.
