What Is a Hat-Trick? A Cricket Prize That Escaped Into Every Sport
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Three goals in a match, three wickets in three balls, three wins in a row: the term now covers achievements with almost nothing in common. Its origin is specific and documented, involving an actual hat, and the drift from that meaning is a clear case of a phrase escaping its sport.
Where the hat came from
The phrase originates in cricket in the 1850s, where a bowler taking three wickets with three consecutive deliveries was a rare enough feat that his club presented him with a hat, or passed a hat round to collect money for him. The earliest documented use refers to a match in 1858 in which the bowler H. H. Stephenson achieved the feat and was presented with a hat bought from a collection. The cricketing definition has stayed strict, requiring three wickets with three balls delivered consecutively by the same bowler, though it may span two overs or even two innings or two matches, since what matters is that the deliveries are consecutive for that bowler rather than consecutive in the match. Four in four balls is a double hat-trick in common usage, and the feat remains rare enough at the highest level to be individually remembered. The specificity of that original definition is what makes the later drift noticeable, since it was a precise technical achievement and not simply a count of three.
How other sports use it
The term spread and its meaning loosened, differently in each sport:
- •Football, where three goals by one player in a match qualifies regardless of when they are scored, and where a perfect version scored with left foot, right foot and head is separately recognised
- •Ice hockey, where three goals by one player in a game is traditionally marked by spectators throwing hats onto the ice, which preserves the original object if not the original sport
- •Rugby, where three tries by one player is a hat-trick, occasionally still called that in league and union both
- •Motorsport, variously used for pole position, fastest lap and victory in the same event, or for three consecutive wins
- •Horse racing, athletics and many others, where three consecutive victories in the same event or three titles in a row are described this way
- •General usage, where any three of anything achieved by the same person or team attracts the phrase, including three consecutive election wins
What the drift shows
The phrase is a good example of how a technical term becomes a general one. The original required consecutiveness, which is what made it difficult and therefore worth a hat. Football's version abandoned consecutiveness entirely and kept only the number, which is a far easier achievement and occurs regularly. Motorsport's version restored consecutiveness in one sense and applied it to different categories of thing. Political and business usage has abandoned both the sport and any technical content. Each step is a small reasonable extension and the cumulative distance is considerable, which is the ordinary mechanism by which vocabulary spreads. The same pattern applies to numerous sporting phrases in general use, including terms for being caught out, for moving the goalposts, for a level playing field and for hitting below the belt, most of which are used by people who could not name the sport they came from, and several of which have acquired meanings their original rules would not recognise.
Related achievements and their names
Sports generate a substantial vocabulary for counting feats, and much of it is similarly obscure. Cricket contributes a five-wicket haul, a five-for, and the duck for a batter dismissed without scoring, which comes from the shape of a duck's egg standing for zero, and a golden duck for one dismissed on the first ball faced. Football has the brace for two goals, which has no clear origin in hunting terminology despite the usual claim. Bowling in the ten-pin sense has the turkey for three consecutive strikes, reportedly from prizes of actual turkeys given at nineteenth-century competitions, which is an origin parallel to the hat. Golf has the albatross, the eagle and the birdie, which form a coherent system invented backwards from the last. Basketball has the triple-double. In each case the term is opaque to outsiders, precise to insiders, and frequently attached to an origin story that may or may not survive investigation.
The takeaway
The phrase comes from cricket in the 1850s, where a bowler taking three wickets with three consecutive balls was given an actual hat bought from a collection. That definition demands consecutiveness and still does. Football kept the number and dropped the consecutiveness, which makes it a far easier feat, and later uses abandoned both. Hockey crowds throwing hats onto the ice preserve the object without the sport.