Darren Gough's hat-trick

The Tin Drummer has kindly contributed this memory to the normblog series:

My most powerful cricketing memory is the roar of the crowd at Sydney in 1999 when Darren Gough took his hat-trick. It was a hot, bright evening towards the end of a hot, painful series (Melbourne aside and Mullally thumping McGrath back past him for 4), and England were, I think, fighting their way back into a Test that could have squared the series - even if the Ashes had gone ages ago. There were 44,000 people there that day, many of them English but many of them Australian too, and the explosion of sound that went up as that third wicket went down was hair-raising. It was a stadium united in appreciation of a magnificent achievement and I was sure that the many people who desperately wanted England to lose (as they did) enjoyed seeing this lively outgoing fish in a sea of dull, dour England players get some reward. It was one of those moments when being in a cricket stadium makes you glad to be alive.

Some reports of Gough's hat-trick:

They [Australia]... lost an astounding five wickets for three in the day's last 15 deliveries, including a hat-trick by Gough, the first by an Englishman in an Ashes Test since Jack Hearne at Leeds in 1899. After getting Healy and MacGill, he completed the set with a swerving torpedo that robbed Miller of his off stump. - Wisden 2000

With the new ball, Gough summoned the force after a long, sweltering day, having Healy caught behind in disarray, plucking out MacGill's middle stump with a yorker and bending one out at high speed to bowl Miller. - David Frith in Wisden Australia 1999

'I've been on a hat-trick a few times in Test cricket. This time I was more relaxed,' said Gough later. He ran in at full bore as usual and produced for the unfortunate Miller another searing yorker which, this time, swung away late to hit the off stump. Delirium from the crowd; joy unconfined for Gough and his team-mates. - Christopher Martin-Jenkins (with Tim de Lisle), An Australian Summer

Gough is on a hat-trick. Miller faces the music and Gough produces an outswinging yorker which zooms in at leg but takes off. It's a hat-trick and I've seen it. The [Barmy] Army goes crazy. - John Harms, Confessions of a Thirteenth Man

Could be the Drummer was himself with the Army that day!

[For links to the other posts in this series, see here.]