As you all well know, Australia does many things differently to the rest of the cricket-playing nations of the world, one of which is describing four wickets in four balls as a ‘double hat-trick’, the reason being because a hat-trick was effectively taken twice in the space of 4 balls (1-2-3 or 2-3-4) , with Lasith Malinga in the 2007 World Cup against South Africa being the most famous double hat-trick in cricketing history, even as Sri Lanka lost the match by a wicket.

Strangely, the phrase has never caught on anywhere else, even New Zealand, with basically everyone else considering a double hat-trick to be 6 wickets in 6 balls.

So anyway, this could very well be the first recorded double hat-trick in the illustrious history of Australian domestic/state cricket, and the lucky bastard is none other than Melbourne Renegades spinner Cameron Boyce, who missed all of the last Big Bash season due to a series of health issues.

In chronological order:

1. After getting the Sydney Thunder off to a lightning start (Pardon the pun), Alex Hales holed out on 44 to end Boyce’s first over, caught by Unmukt Chand in the deep:

2. Boyce comes back on and has Jason Sangha stumped for 2 to get himself on a hat-trick to start his second over

3) Boyce completes the eighth hat-trick in Big Bash League history by trapping Alex Ross dead in front LBW as Ross played a shithouse reverse sweep, and there was a question of if Ross got a small underedge or glove on the ball, and if it even hit his pad, but this is the Big Bash, so the umpire had no hesitation dismissing him immediately:

So that’s the first Big Bash hat-trick for the Renegades, which means the only club without a Big Bash hat-trick is the Sydney Sixers, but Boyce decided to go one step further and make history:

4) Boyce brings up the first double hat-trick in Big Bash history with a ball to Daniel Sams that straightened up and might’ve been going down leg at first glance, but this is the Big Bash, so once again, the umpire had no hesitation dismissing him immediately, and it appeared ball tracking agreed:

To cut a long story short, Boyce ended up with a 5th wicket (Matthew Gilkes) and finished on figures of 5-21 after being 5-7 at one stage, he also dismissed Ben Cutting with a classic Big Bash run-out when the ball flicked off his fingers onto the stumps with Cutting out of his ground at the non-striker’s end….

And completing this happy tale, Boyce got caught for a golden duck on the last ball of the match and the Renegades lost by a run chasing 171, confirming themselves as wooden spooners for the third season running.

Random fact: That’s the third time Daniel Sams has been the final victim in a Big Bash hat-trick, and all three times he was dismissed LBW.

BBL 07 (December 2017): Sams completes Andrew Tye’s second Big Bash hat-trick for the Perth Scorchers, becoming the only bowler to take two Big Bash hat-tricks:

BBL 09: Completes Haris Rauf’s hat-trick for the Melbourne Stars, which was the second hat-trick on that fateful day (Jan 9, 2020) after Rashid Khan’s performance in Adelaide:

And now he completes Cameron Boyce’s historic double hat-trick…

Still, a double hat-trick wasn’t even the craziest thing at the MCG today, because this happened: