'It still hasn't sunk in' – UAE spinner talks through his historic World Cup hat-trick

It was a ‘magical piece of bowling’ that wrote Karthik Meiyappan into the history books as he took a stunning hat-trick against Sri Lanka, ripping through the middle order and sealing the feat with a turner right through the gate to scatter Dasun Shanaka’s timbers.

Brett Lee, Kagiso Rabada, Curtis Campher, Wanindu Hasaranga and now Meiyappan, only five men’s players in the history of the game have taken a hat-trick at an ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

And few hat-tricks in the game can have been of a higher quality than Meiyappan’s. It was a stunning moment, and after the match the 22-year-old talked reporters through each delivery:

"First up against Rajapaksa, I think the length side was a long boundary for him," Meiyappan explained. "I thought he would try to take me down over there because I think he was five-from-five, something like that. I started to push it and he tried but he sliced it, straight to Kashif on the boundary. That was the first one."

"And then Asalanka walked in. That was a no-brainer for me. I was going to bowl around and straight up. Vriitya took an amazing catch."

"When Dasun walked in, I was going through my emotions of being on a hat-trick, but all I wanted to do was bowl at the stumps. And whatever happens after that, it is not in my hands. But again I just bowled around him and I think he picked it (wrong), tried to go over cover. But yeah.

"I was clear with my plans before the hat-trick ball. And no one came in. But we always have a chat when we bowl, me and the wicket-keeper. We are from the same city, which is why we talked in our language, Tamil. We had a conversation before that and I just delivered what I wanted to."

There had never previously been a hat-trick for UAE in T20 Internationals, and Meiyappan’s performance earned him praise from ICC pundit and former Sri Lanka player Russell Arnold.

“He was bowling well right through, the wrong’un none of the batters picked,” Arnold said.

“It was the Sri Lankan middle-order, so these are good batters, not the tail… and he just bamboozled them. It was a really, really good spell that restricted Sri Lanka to 150 rather than what could have been 180.”

Despite Meiyappan’s 3/19 off four overs, Sri Lanka’s restricted 152/8 still proved too much for UAE’s batters, who crumbled to 73 all out.

Two defeats, and the significant margin of this loss, means that UAE’s World Cup campaign is effectively over, with Namibia to come in their last Group A match.

And that has left Meiyappan with a bitter-sweet feeling.

“It still hasn't sunk in, the fact I got a hat-trick in a T20 World Cup and the first (UAE) bowler to do so. It really is a proud moment, amazing," he said. "But it would have been much sweeter, much better if we had won the game tonight.

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“Obviously making the team to be in the World Cup was an achievement in itself, but the main goal was to play the Super 12s. As of now I think, going forward for us, it would be the 2023 World Cup in India. That's what we'll be prepping up for.”

After a performance and a magical moment like this one, the future is certainly bright for young Meiyappan.