The newly-built Bansilal Cricket Stadium witnessed the first hat-trick in first class cricket on Saturday when Haryana's Joginder Sharma came up with a magnificient seven-wicket haul to bowl out Andhra Pradesh for 168 in their second innings of the Ranji Trophy match in Rohtak.
Chasing a victory target of 242, Haryana were 92 for three in their second essay; the hosts require another 150 runs to win the match with seven wickets in hand.
The day clearly belonged to Joginder, who had the Andhra batsmen running for cover.
After he ran through the top order, removing four frontline batsmen, the medium pacer claimed three wickets in the last three balls of the 57th over.
He first castled RVC Prasad with the fourth ball of the over, trapped D kalyankrishna with the next delivery and signed off by bowling YL Kishore to complete his hat-trick, which also dropped curtains on Andhra's second innings.
Joginder's second innings bowling figures read 22-8-41-7; he thus completed an 11-wicket haul in the match.
Chasing 242, Haryana, however, lost three early wickets -- including opener Sumit Sharma and Sunny Singh -- to finish the day on 92 in 50 overs.
Scorecard
Andhra (1st innings): 202
Haryana (1st innings): 129
Andhra (2nd innings):
MSK Prasad lbw b Budhwar 13
L Reddy lbw b Joginder Sharma 35
A Varma c Shafiq Khan b Joginder Sharma 3
Y Venugopal Rao c Rawat b Rana 14
M Faiq b Sunny Singh 13
Y Gnaneswara Rao lbw b Joginder Sharma 27
A Pradeep c Rawat b Joginder Sharma 24
R Prasad b Joginder Sharma 20
K Sahabuddin not out 1
D Kalyankrishna lbw b Joginder Sharma 0
Y Kishore b Joginder Sharma 0
Extras: (b 6, lb 2, w 2, nb 8) 18
Total: (all out; 57 overs; 268 mins) 168
Fall of wickets: 1-22, 2-25, 3-59, 4-88, 5-88, 6-132, 7-167, 8-168, 9-168, 10-168.
Bowling: Joginder Sharma 22-8-41-7, S Budhwar 17-2-56-1, S Rana 8-1-18-1, Sunny Singh 5-1-24-1, A Mishra 5-0-21-0.
Haryana (2nd innings):
Sumit Sharma lbw b Kalyankrishna 28
Sunny Singh c MSK Prasad b Sahabuddin 6
D Joon lbw b Venugopal Rao
Shafiq Khan not out 29
S Rana not out 7.
Extras: (lb 2, nb 2) 4
Total: (3 wickets; 50 overs) 92
To bat: M Rawat, S Budhwar, Joginder Sharma, G Vashisht, S Verma, A Mishra
Fall of wickets: 1-11, 2-41, 3-74.
Bowling: K Sahabuddin 12-6-21-1, D Kalyankrishna 11-4-24-1, R Prasad 7-2-15-0, Y Gnaneswara Rao 7-3-12-0, Y Venugopal Rao 12-5-18-1, Y Kishore 1-1-0-0.