2 years ago
21
ARTICLE AD BOX
The Hundred has a new hero.
With three beautifully bowled leg breaks, Alana King's place in the tournament's history was assured as the first woman to take a hat-trick in the 100-ball competition.
Three wickets in three balls is some feat no matter how they come. But there are hat-tricks and there are hat-tricks.
Forget long hops, miscues caught on the boundary or full tosses smashed to cover, this was special from King.
The Australian bowled Cordelia Griffith leg stump with a ball that skidded on, before trapping Sophie Ecclestone plumb lbw with a handsomely-flighted delivery that drifted in and straightened.
She saved the best for last, castling Kate Cross with another beauty: full and turning just enough to beat the edge as the batter aimed a shot through the leg side.
Cue jubilant celebrations reminiscent of Imran Tahir, another leg-spinner and the first man to take a hat-trick in The Hundred last year, with Trent Rockets players sprinting in all directions, desperate to share in the debutants' joy.
The crowd at Old Trafford was stunned into silence as the Manchester Originals collapsed towards a crushing defeat. Some, though, were just watching in wonder as a new idol revealed herself.
"If I was a young girl in the crowd, I'd be thinking, 'I want to be like you,'" Central Sparks all-rounder Thea Brookes said on Test Match Special. "It's been unbelievable."
King is already a superstar of the women's game and yet at the start of this year she was still a relative unknown, at least to an international audience.
The 26-year-old, whose parents hail from Chennai, was uncapped in any format by Australia before 20 January but in the space of 14 days debuted in Twenty20 international, one-day international and Test cricket.
By early April, she had won the Ashes and the World Cup and established herself as a key member of a team widely regarded as one of the best, and certainly most dominant, in world sport.
King grew up idolising Shane Warne and it seems fitting that in the year Australia lost one great leg-spinner, another has emerged.
Even more fitting perhaps is that King's first big moment on English soil came at Old Trafford, where Warne bowled his famous 'Ball of the Century' back in 1993. A fact that was not lost on the bowler herself.
"I hope Shane Warne is looking down and is pretty proud I spun it a bit today," she told Sky Sports. "I am very happy to have done well here."
It feels unfair in the extreme to compare anyone to the greatest spin bowler the game has ever seen and yet to listen to former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta on Test Match Special, it was hard not to draw parallels.
"Alana King is box office," he said. "She's so good, her line and length, variations, the control that she has and her reading of the game as well. Absolutely brilliant."
There will only ever be one Shane Warne but in Alana King we do now have another leggie - wearing yellow - to marvel at for the rest of The Hundred and beyond.
English (US)