Wellington pacer scalps all 10 wickets in an innings

Ricky Joseph, a Wellington club cricket bowler took all 10 wickets in an innings of a Wellington premier club cricket match, making him the first bowler in almost 20 years to cap this extraordinary feat. The pacer playing for Eastern Suburbs returned with figures of 10/35 in 12.3 overs to skittle out Johnsonville for 70 in the first innings of their Pearce Cup match.

History repeated itself as on November 1996, Alex Wharf, an English international representing Johnsonville took 10/72 against Hutt District on this very same ground.

Surprisingly, except the first wicket Joseph got all his other victims in the form of caught behind or LBW. Ironically in such a situation, a bowler would not let the ball go out of his hand, but the pacer was trying his best to avoid the captain’s call to bowl an over.

"I tried to get that ball out of my hand. After eight wickets I had about three overs when I didn't get anything and I'd bowled 10 overs and my fitness isn't the highest. I said I'd bowl one more and I got the ninth and I thought I'd have to give it a crack. I had an over at the No 11, but he stuck around, and then it was the next over after that I got it", he said with a laugh.

There were two instances in the innings where Joseph was on a hat-trick only to be denied somehow by the Johnsonville batsman. He said, "They were pretty straight, they played and missed one of them and they hit the other one."

The legacy with the 20-year old incident just does not stop here. That day Johnsonville skipper Doug Pollock watched Wharf bagging the full monty, and today he was the Eastern Suburbs chairman witnessing Joseph scaling a peak.

Pollock admitted that he did the utmost to move Wharf out of the attack saying, “Wharfy finished it off with a hat-trick, all bowled, but I was trying to get him off. I said 'Wharfy, you're knackered, come off' and he said 'no, no, one more, one more'. He'd bowled 15 overs on the trot at that point so was pretty tired. You need a bit of luck and he was a bit like Ricky - well he was a bit quicker than Ricky - but he just bowled straight and got all his wickets caught in the slips or behind, lbw or bowled."

Wharf finished with another hat-trick for match figures of 16/103 and Joseph will surely like to emulate his feat.

In international Cricket, only Jim Laker and Anil Kumble have got 10 wickets in an innings.