The term ‘hat-trick’ in cricket has no official definition by its governing bodies but is a term used by the media and cricket fans to describe taking three wickets in three consecutive deliveries. A hat-trick in sports is generally the achievement of a positive feat three times or another achievement based on the number three in some sports.
Coming to the Cricket, the term was first appeared in 1858, to describe HH Stephenson’s taking three wickets with three consecutive deliveries. Thus, fans held a collection for Stephenson and presented him a hat with the proceeds. The term was used in print for the first time in 1868 and it was eventually adopted by many other sports including hockey, association football, water polo and team handball.
“A hat-trick occurs in cricket when a bowler dismisses three batsmen with consecutive deliveries. The deliveries may be interrupted by an over bowled by another bowler from the other end of the pitch or the other team’s innings, but must be three consecutive deliveries by the individual bowler in the same match.”
Note: Only wickets attributed to the bowler count towards a hat-trick; run outs do not count.
Taking two wickets in two consecutive deliveries is occasionally known as a brace. While the feat of taking four wickets in four balls has occurred only once in international one-day cricket, in the 2007 World Cup and the bowler was Sri Lanka’s pacer Lasith Malinga.
So far in Test cricket history there have been just 41 hat-tricks, in One Day International cricket there have been 36 hat-tricks and in T20Is there have been four hat-tricks recorded.
If a bowler takes six wickets in six consecutive deliveries, it will be considered as two different hat-tricks. There is no special name for this as no one has yet achieved this feat but we may say it a double hat-trick. However if a bowler takes four wickets in four consecutive deliveries it is called as four in four but the term double hat-trick has also been used in the media. Actually, there is no special term for that. Everyone refer them in their own term.