A second strike of lightning

The storms are done and the floodwaters have abated, but lightning still struck for the second time at the Bangabandhu National Stadium today, as New Zealand's James Franklin emulated his idol, Wasim Akram, by claiming cricket's equivalent of the hole-in-one, the prized hat-trick.

Five-and-half years on from the Asian Test Championship final at Dhaka, where Wasim skittled three Sri Lankan batsmen en route to victory, Franklin's precision line proved too much for three helpless Bangladesh tailenders, who found themselves in the record books for all the wrong reasons.

And the comparisons don't stop there. Like Wasim, Franklin is a left-armer seamer, and he too had to wait until the first ball of his next over to claim his crowning glory. Now it's up to Franklin to go on and take hat-tricks in consecutive matches as Wasim did in March 1999. Appropriately enough, the man himself was looking on from the commentary box today.

Franklin's hat-trick was only the second by a New Zealand bowler in Test history, 28 years after Peter Petherick spun his way into Kiwi folklore on debut at Lahore. Franklin himself is in just his fourth Test, after being cast aside by the New Zealand selectors in 2001 following his first two Tests against Pakistan when he was just 20 years of age.

That Franklin is even on this tour is fortuitous. He was overlooked for the winter tour of England, and instead headed to Lancashire to play club cricket where, after a string of injuries in the New Zealand team, he was drafted into the side for the third Test at Trent Bridge. Six wickets later, he had effectively booked his ticket to Bangladesh.

The seamers had failed to fire for most of the first day, so there must have been some temptation for Stephen Fleming to open from one end with the left-arm spin of Daniel Vettori. He didn't and, as they say, the rest is history.

Spectators and media alike were just finding their seats when Manjural Islam Rana, so disciplined yesterday afternoon, drove loosely at Franklin's fifth ball of the morning and gave Brendan McCullum a simple catch behind the stumps. Mohammad Rafique received a beautifully angled delivery first-up, and the edge that flew to Scott Styris at second slip was unavoidable.

Jacob Oram then completed a tidy over from the other end, whereupon Franklin returned to rip out Tapash Baisya's off stump with a delivery that the great Wasim himself would have been proud of. Tapash had elected to play no stroke, but at the last minute, the ball swung in just enough to find the ultimate target.