The story
In 1858, at Hyde Park in Sheffield, England, the cricketer H. H. Stephenson took three wickets with three balls in a row. For a bowler in cricket, that is a rare and brilliant feat.
His admirers took up a collection and bought him a hat. The sporting paper Bell’s Life reported that he took “three wickets in three successive balls, entitling himself to a new hat.”
The name followed. By 1865 a newspaper could say a bowler “performed the hat trick by getting three wickets in the over.” Stage magicians had already been doing “the hat trick” for decades, which may have helped the name stick.
Other sports borrowed it: horse racing by the 1890s, and later hockey and soccer, where a hat trick means three goals by one player in a single game.
