Mumbai: Rajasthan Royal’s leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal continues to have a great season as he became the first bowler in IPL 2022 to claim a brilliant hattrick against a Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Chahal ended with figures of 5/40 which made it the first time he has taken a five-wicket haul in his IPL career.
Coming into the bowl in the 17th over when Kolkata needed 40 runs to win and Chahal bowled a dream over and took four wickets and conceded just two runs to turn the game on its head. Opting to bowl first Royals showed their batting prowess once again as Jos Buttler smashed yet another hundred to take their team to a mammoth total of 217 for 5 in 20 overs.
Chahal became the 19th player in the history of the Indian Premier League to take a hat-trick.
He also became the fifth RR player to achieve this feat. Chahal joined Ajit Chandila (4/13 in 2012), Pravin Tambe (3/26 in 2016) Shane Watson (3/13 in 2014), and Shreyas Gopal (3/12 in 2019) in the elite list of RR players to achieve the massive feat.
“I had to take wickets in this match to change the result. I worked on my bowling. I spoke to the coaches and the skipper. I was thinking of a googly but then I didn’t want to take a chance. Would have been a happy with a dot ball as well on my hat-trick ball. My googly was coming out well and sent it down to Venkatesh Iyer,” said Chahal in the post-match press conference explaining his hat-trick.
