The Ranji Trophy is India’s oldest first-class competition and some of the finest national side players have come through this tournament over the years and decades. And while hundreds of batsmen have scored centuries and double centuries, we want to highlight some of the best bowling performances in this tournament; in particular, we’ll talk about Ranji Trophy hat-tricks here.
While several bowlers have taken 6-fers and even 7-fers in this tournament over time, just an elite few have managed to take hat-tricks in the Ranji Trophy. The first to do so was Baqa Jilani who picked up a hat-trick for Northern India vs Southern Punjab in the inaugural season in 1934/35 and that led to him even making his Team India debut for a single Test match. Keep reading for the full list of Ranji hat-tricks…
Complete Ranji Trophy hat-tricks list
Jilani picked up 5/7 in that game which saw him help bowl out Southern Punjab for as low as 22 runs in their 2nd innings. Post that, many bowlers have created such highlight moments and gone down in the Ranji Trophy history books. Check out our complete list of Ranji Trophy hat-tricks below, last updated on 12th December 2022, from start of the tournament in the 1934/35 season till date:
| Sr. | Season | Bowler | Team vs Opponent | Victims |
| 1 | 1934/35 | Baqa Jilani | Northern India vs Southern Punjab | Lall Singh, Joginder Singh, Yuvraj of Patiala |
| 2 | 1936/37 | Mubarak Ali | Nawangar vs Western India | Akbar Khan, Hari Mali, Shanoor Khan |
| 3 | 1937/38 | Thomas Longfield | Bengal vs Bihar | Edward Leigh, Subir Chakravorty, J Das Gupta |
| 4 | 1943/44 | Jehangir Khot | Bombay vs Baroda | Vivek Hazare, Subbanna Nayudu, Mahipatrao Indulkar |
| 5 | 1947/48 | D. Narottam | Kathiawar vs Baroda | Chandrasen Gaekwad, Vivek Hazare, Ahmed Patel |
| 6 | 1948/49 | Sarobindu Banerjee | Bihar vs Delhi | Ishwar Dayal, Hargopal Singh, Gian Kapoor |
| 7 | 1948/49 | Chandrasekhar Sarwate | Holkar vs Bihar | L Sterling, N Chakravarthy, Cambatta |
| 8 | 1954/55 | Probir Sen | Bengal vs Orissa | Ram Sastry, N Padhi, TS Sastri |
| 9 | 1955/56 | Venkatappa Muddiah | Services vs Eastern Punjab | Harold Ghosh, Jitender Dev, Om Prakash |
| 10 | 1956/57 | Vasant Ranjane | Maharashtra vs Saurashtra | Mohamed Zahid, J Chauda, D Narottam |
| 11 | 1959/60 | Nandi Khanna | Southern Punjab vs Jammu & Kashmir | Balwant Kapoor, VB Kaul, Saifuddin Drabu |
| 12 | 1961/62 | Nyalchand Shah | Saurashtra vs Baroda | Cecil Williams, Hazaratali Saiyad, Vasantrao Ghatge |
| 13 | 1962/63 | Hiralal Gaekwad | Madhya Pradesh vs Rajasthan | Ramesh Shah, Gundibail Sunderam, Subhash Gupte |
| 14 | 1963/64 | Umesh Kulkarni | Bombay vs Gujarat | Jitoo Patel, Rusi Surti, Dhimant Arun |
| 15 | 1963/64 | Subhash Jhanji | Uttar Pradesh vs Vidarbha | Syed Rahim, Prakash Khot, Suresh Pendarkar |
| 16 | 1963/64 | Joginder Rao | Services vs Jammu & Kashmir | Tahir Firdausi, Vijay Malhotra, Abdul Rauf |
| 17 | 1963/64 | Joginder Rao (2) | Services vs Northern Punjab | Suresh Sharma, Brij Mohan Khanna, Bhupinder Singh |
| 18 | 1963/64 | Joginder Rao (3) | Services vs Northern Punjab | Rajindr Kumar Kale, Ramnath Paul, Bishan Singh Bedi |
| 19 | 1965/66 | Ravinder Pal | Delhi vs Southern Punjab | Gurcharan Singh, Daljit Saxena, Ravinder Gopal |
| 20 | 1968/69 | Bishan Singh Bedi | Delhi vs Punjab | Surindranath, Rajinder Pal, Harminder Singh |
| 21 | 1969/70 | Kailash Gattani | Rajasthan vs Uttar Pradesh | Sharfuddin, Ghauri Majid, Moolchand |
| 22 | 1971/72 | Mehboodullah Khan | Uttar Pradesh vs Madhya Pradesh | – |
| 23 | 1972/73 | BS Kalyanasundaram | Tamil Nadu vs Bombay | – |
| 24 | 1973/74 | Abdul Ismail | Bombay vs Saurashtra | – |
| 25 | 1981/82 | Raghuram Bhat | Karnataka vs Bombay | – |
| 26 | 1986/87 | Bharat Arun | Tamil Nadu vs Goa | – |
| 27 | 1986/87 | Barun Burman | Bengal vs Tripua | – |
| 28 | 1987/88 | Sourajit Mohapatra | Orissa vs Tripura | – |
| 29 | 1988/89 | Shankar Saini | Delhi vs Himachal Pradesh | – |
| 30 | 1988/89 | Salil Ankola | Maharashtra vs Gujarat | – |
| 31 | 1989/90 | Javagal Srinath | Karnataka vs Hyderabad | – |
| 32 | 1989/90 | Arun Singla | Haryana vs Services | – |
| 33 | 1989/90 | Saradindu Mukherjee | Bengal vs Hyderabad | – |
| 34 | 1990/91 | Vurity Venkatram | Bihar vs Tripura | – |
| 35 | 1991/92 | Rudra Pratap Singh | Uttar Pradesh vs Vidarbha | – |
| 36 | 1991/92 | Anil Kumble | Karnataka vs Andhra | – |
| 37 | 1992/93 | Sunil Subramaniam | Tamil Nadu vs Kerala | – |
| 38 | 1993/94 | Pritam Gandhe | Vidarbha vs Rajasthan | – |
| 39 | 1993/94 | Arshad Ayub | Hyderabad vs Kerala | – |
| 40 | 1993/94 | Sagarmoy Sensharma | Bengal vs Delhi | – |
| 41 | 1995/96 | Mani Suresh Kumar | Railways vs Rajasthan | – |
| 42 | 1996/97 | Murali Kartik | Railways vs Vidarbha | – |
| 43 | 1997/98 | Anil Kumble (2) | Karnataka vs Orissa | Robin Morris, Gautam Gopal, Shahid Khan |
Picking up 3 wickets in 3 consecutive deliveries is very difficult, regardless of what format of cricket you’re playing. And over the years, only three bowlers have managed to pick up Ranji Trophy hat-tricks on more than one occasion each, including Joginder Rao, Anil Kumble, and Vinay Kumar. Rao as the first to do so and he’s also the first and only player to have three (3) Ranji Trophy hat-tricks to his name.
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Rao became the seventh man in FC history to achieve a hat-trick on debut, only to follow it up with something even more special in the second game of his career, where he picked up two hat-tricks in a single innings, doing so in the 2nd innings of his match against Northern Punjab. These are the kind of things that happen very, very rarely in our game of cricket! (Check out Ranji Trophy top runs scorers)
| Sr. | Season | Bowler | Team vs Opponent | Victims |
| 44 | 1998/99 | Anand Katti | Karnataka vs Kerala | KN Ananthapadmanabhan, Bhaskaran Ramprakash, Koragappa Chandrashekara |
| 45 | 1998/99 | Damodaran Devanand | Tamil Nadu vs Orissa | Gautam Gopal, Sanjay Satpathy, Shahid Khan |
| 46 | 2001/02 | Amit Mishra | Haryana vs Himachal Pradesh | Virender Sharma, Amit Sharma, Chetan Kumar |
| 47 | 2001/02 | Ajay Barik | Orissa vs Assam | Bachan Singh, DJ Gokulakrishnan, Sukhvinder Singh |
| 48 | 2002/03 | Gagandeep Singh | Punjab vs Uttar Pradesh | Nikhil Chopra, Javed Anwar, Mritunjay Tripathi |
| 49 | 2003/04 | Ramakrishnan Ramkumar | Tamil Nadu vs Karnataka | Dodda Ganesh, Venkatesh Prasad, Udit Patel |
| 50 | 2004/05 | S Sreesanth | Kerala vs Himachal Pradesh | Manvinder Bisla, Ajay Mannu, Paras Dogra |
| 51 | 2004/05 | Rajesh Pawar | Baroda vs Hyderabad | Ibrahim Khaleel, Narinder Singh, Venkatapathy Raju |
| 52 | 2004/05 | Rakesh Patel | Baroda vs Tamil Nadu | Dinesh Karthik, Mumbai Shrinivas, Ramakrishnan Ramkumar |
| 53 | 2006/07 | Joginder Sharma | Haryana vs Andhra | Chandramouli Prasad, Doddapaneni Kalyankrishna, Lakshman Kishore |
| 54 | 2007/08 | Sony Cheruvathur | Kerala vs Gujarat | Amit Singh, Siddharth Trivedi, Hitesh Majmudar |
| 55 | 2007/08 | Parvinder Awana | Delhi vs Maharashtra | Vishal Bhilare, Kedar Jadhav, Sairaj Bahutule |
| 56 | 2007/08 | VRV Singh | Punjab vs Orissa | Rashmi Parida, Rashmi Das, Sourabha Sehgal |
| 57 | 2007/08 | Vinay Kumar | Karnataka vs Maharashtra | Ankit Bawne, Ajinkya Joshi, Ameya Shrikhande |
| 58 | 2008/09 | Pritam Gandhe (2) | Vidarbha vs Services | Amiya Mohanty, Shuvra Karmakar, Pankaj Kumar |
| 59 | 2008/09 | Salim Veragi | Baroda vs Tamil Nadu | Chinnaswamy Suresh, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Palani Amarnath |
| 60 | 2009/10 | Abhimanyu Mithun | Karnataka vs Uttar Pradesh | Piyush Chawla, Amir Khan, Rudra Pratap Singh |
| 61 | 2009/10 | Samad Fallah | Maharashtra vs Baroda | Bhargav Bhatt, Munaf Patel, Yusuf Pathan |
| 62 | 2010/11 | Dhruv Singh | Haryana vs Uttar Pradesh | Shivakant Shukla, Parvinder Singh, Ashish Yadav |
| 63 | 2010/11 | Pawan Suyal | Delhi vs Assam | Dhiraj Goswami, Arlen Konwar, Ranjit Mali |
| 64 | 2011/12 | Abu Ahmed | Assam vs Goa | Sher Yadav, Sathiamoorty Saravanan, Rahul Keni |
| 65 | 2011/12 | Siddharth Trivedi | Saurashtra vs Punjab | Karan Goel, Harbhajan Singh, Manpreet Gony |
| 66 | 2011/12 | Krishnakant Upadhyay | Railways vs Punjab | Uday Kaul, Taruwar Kohli, Manpreet Gony |
| 67 | 2012/13 | Mohammed Shami | Bengal vs Madhya Pradesh | Anand Rajan, Amarjeet Singh, Ishwar Pandey |
| 68 | 2013/14 | Rakesh Dhruve | Gujarat vs Vidarbha | Shrikant Wagh, Umesh Yadav, Sandeep Singh |
| 69 | 2014/15 | Sreenath Aravind | Karnataka vs Tamil Nadu | Malolan Rangarajan, Lakshmipathy Balaji, M Mohammed |
| 70 | 2014/15 | Mohit Sharma | Haryana vs Delhi | Virender Sehwag, Parvinder Awana, Navdeep Saini |
| 71 | 2015/16 | HS Sharath | Karnataka vs Haryana | Sachin Rana, Rahul Dagar, Nitin Saini |
| 72 | 2015/16 | Basant Mohanty | Orissa vs Delhi | Punit Bisht, Suboth Bhati, Pulkit Narang |
| 73 | 2015/16 | Umesh Yadav | Vidarbha vs Rajasthan | Kukna Ajay Singh, Aniket Choudhary, Nathu Singh |
| 74 | 2016/17 | Rana Dutta | Tripura vs Himachal Pradesh | Rishi Dhawan, Sumeet Verma, Mayank Dagar |
| 75 | 2017/18 | Vinay Kumar (2) | Karnataka vs Mumbai | Prithvi Shaw, Jay Bista, Akash Parkar |
| 76 | 2017/18 | Rajneesh Gurbani | Vidarbha vs Delhi | Vikas Mishra, Navdeep Saini, Dhruv Shorey |
| 77 | 2018/19 | Mohammed Mudhasir | Jammu & Kashmir vs Rajasthan | Chetan Bist, Tajinder Singh, Deepak Chahar, Tanveer Ul-Haq |
| 78 | 2019/20 | Shahbaz Ahmed | Bengal vs Hyderabad | Jaweed Ali, Ravi Kiran, Kolla Sumanth |
| 79 | 2019/20 | Ravi Yadav | Madhya Pradesh vs Uttar Pradesh | Aryan Juyal, Ankit Rajpoot, Sameer Rizvi |
| 80 | 2022/23 | Jaydev Unadkat | Saurashtra vs Delhi | Dhruv Shorey, Vaibhav Rawal, Yash Dhull |
| 81 | 2023/24 | Royston Dias | Mumbai vs Bihar | Ashutosh Aman, Himanshu Singh, Veer Pratap Singh |
| 82 | 2023/24 | Kulwant Khejroliya | Madhya Pradesh vs Baroda | Shashwat Rawat, Mahesh Pithiya, Bhargav Bhatt, Akash Singh |
| 83 | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD |
| 84 | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD |
And just to prove to you how cricket can be a great leveller at times as well, there have been a couple of occasions where a bowler who has taken a Ranji Trophy hat-trick has also been the third batting victim of a hat-trick for someone else. This happened with TN’s Ramakrishnan Ramkumar a year after he got his Ranji Trophy hat-trick and UP’s Rudra Pratap Singh, 18 years after he got his.
In terms of teams, Karnataka has the most number of hat-tricks to their name with as many as ten (10) of them, and no other team very close to them. Interestingly, Shankar Saini, Mohammed Mudhasir, and Kulwant Khejroliya are the only 3 players in the history of Ranji Trophy cricket to get a double hat-trick, which is 4 wickets in 4 balls.
Players with 4 wickets in 4 balls in first-class cricket and hat-trick in List-A cricket:
Mohammad Mudhasir (Jammu & Kashmir)
Kulwant Khejroliya (Madhya Pradesh/Delhi)#RanjiTrophy pic.twitter.com/9sjdltyyRo— Kausthub Gudipati (@kaustats) February 12, 2024
For more updates on Ranji Trophy 2024-25 and other cricketing tournaments in India and around the world, remember to always stay tuned to ReadScoops.com…
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