da imperador bet： His maiden List A hat-trick came in the Vijay Hazare final; a month on, he has a T20 hat-trick too
Nagraj Gollapudi29-Nov-2019
Abhimanyu Mithun picked up five wickets in the last over of the Haryana innings•PTI
Abhimanyu Mithun is having a domestic season to remember. First, he picked up a birthday hat-trick and a maiden List A five-wicket haul in Karnataka’s win over Tamil Nadu in the Vijay Hazare Trophy final last month. On Friday, he not only picked up another hat-trick but became perhaps only the second bowler to pick five wickets in one over in T20 history. From the time ESPNcricinfo has been gathering ball-by-ball data, only Bangladesh’s Al-Amin Hossain has managed to knock over so many batsmen in a single over.Mithun’s 5 for 39 came in the semi-final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy – the domestic T20 competition – against Haryana in Surat. Coming into his fourth over after conceding 18 off his third – the most expensive over of the innings – Mithun’s strikes prevented Haryana from going past the 200-run mark.Before Mithun started the over, Haryana were rampant at 192 for 3, with Himanshu Rana and Rahul Tewatia having stitched together a robust partnership. Between overs 15 and 19, Haryana had scored 57 runs, and a 200-plus score was very much on the cards. But Mithun had plans up his sleeve – slow the pace down. And it worked.Rana, who had blasted his second fifty in the tournament, his highest in the format, mistimed a pull straight into the hands of Mayank Agarwal at deep midwicket. Tewatia then holed out to wide long-on. Mithun then achieved his maiden hat-trick in the format after Sumit Kumar failed to read a slower one and scooped it straight to the fielder behind square leg.Off the next delivery, he bowled a knuckle ball that Amit Mishra mistimed to cover to make it four in four. A back-of-the-hand slower delivery, which Jayant Yadav did not read, was easily pouched by KL Rahul behind the wicket off the last ball to complete the haul.