Pakistan's Noman Ali celebrates aft taking the hat-trick against West Indies connected Day 1 of the 2nd Test lucifer astatine Multan. (PCB | X)
With the archetypal 3 balls of the 12th implicit connected Day 1, Noman Ali created past for Pakistan cricket. He became the archetypal ever Pakistani rotation bowler to prime up a hat-trick successful the longest format of the sport, dismissing 3 West Indies batters connected the trot from 38/4 to 38/7 and permission the visitors reeling aft they had opted to bat first.
First it was Justin Greaves, who was caught by Babar Azam astatine 2nd gaffe for 1. Then Tevin Imlach paid the terms for an ill-judged expanse changeable and was retired archetypal ball. Facing the hat-trick ball, Kevin Sinclair pushed astatine 1 that conscionable turned from offstump and it was erstwhile again Babar Azam astatine 2nd slip, taking a crisp drawback to spark wide celebrations.
Watch the video of the hat-trick here:
𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭! 😍
Hat-trick leader Noman Ali makes past successful Multan 🙌#PAKvWI | #RedBallRumble pic.twitter.com/2xRLeYpVXl
— Pakistan Cricket (@TheRealPCB) January 25, 2025
Before Noman, each Pakistan hat-tricks successful men’s Test cricket were taken by pacers. Wasim Akram was the archetypal Pakistan bowler to execute the feat, backmost successful the 1988-99 play and helium did truthful doubly against Sri Lanka. The others are Abdul Razzaq (vs SL), Mohammad Sami (vs SL), Naseem Shah (vs BAN).
Before the match, erstwhile pacer and existent Pakistan caput manager Aaqib Javed defended the hosts’ determination to play turning tracks for the location assignments, saying that they could person been successful the contention for the World Test Championship last had these decisions been taken earlier.
“The regularisation of trial cricket is to triumph astatine home. If you triumph astatine location and you triumph 2-3 tests away, you go a beardown campaigner for the final,” Aqib had said successful the pre-match property conference. We played successful South Africa and didn’t tract a spinner determination owed to the conditions. Similarly, pitches successful Australia and England favour gait bowlers. Every state prepares pitches according to their vantage to triumph matches. I don’t recognize the occupation with spin-friendly wickets. If gait bowlers instrumentality wickets, radical accidental cricket is progressing, but if spinners instrumentality wickets, they accidental cricket is going backward. I don’t recognize this.”