Hat trick signalled the start of professional sport?

All evidence indicates that the now common sports term "hat trick" originated from the game of cricket in England during the 19^th century when it became customary for clubs to award a bowler with a new hat to reward the feat of taking three wickets with three consecutive balls. One legend, however, has it that on achieving this feat, a bowler was awarded the right to send his hat around the crowd for a collection.

The term is said to have been used for the first time in 1858 to describe the three-balls-three-wickets achieved by HH Stephenson. It was first used in print in 1878.

Up until 2008, when the last hat trick in Test cricket we could trace was recorded in a game between New Zealand and England, with Ryan Sidebottom of England the successful bowler, there have been only 37 hat tricks in this format of the game.

South Africa also features in a once-off record with regard to Test match hat tricks. In a 1912 Test series against Australia, South Africa became the only country to lose three wickets from three consecutive balls twice in the same game. The Aussie who ended up with a hat to wear and one to save for a rainy day, was Jimmy Matthews.

Exactly why, where and when the term transferred to other sport codes is lost in obscurity, but it is now commonly used in most of them to describe feats having to do with threes, such as three goals in a match of soccer or hockey or three tries in rugby.

Next time round, we will explore the origins of another interesting cricket term: "to bowl a maiden over". In the interim, we will leave it to the imagination of our readers.