Hat-Trick, Five in Five, Nine Wickets: Laura Cardoso Wrote T20I History in Gaborone

In a dusty ground in Gaborone, Botswana, on Thursday, a 21-year-old Brazilian fast bowler took three quiet deliveries to settle in — and then proceeded to do something that no cricketer, man or woman, had ever done in the history of T20 international cricket.

Over by Over: How the Record Unfolded

Brazil had just posted 202 for 5 against Lesotho, powered by Monnike Machado’s unbeaten 69 off 41 balls and Roberta Avery’s 48 off 35. The target was challenging. What followed was extraordinary.

Laura Cardoso began bowling in the second over of Lesotho’s chase. Her first three deliveries produced nothing. Then the spell changed gear entirely.

Balls four, five and six of that over — three wickets in three balls. A hat-trick, right from the start.

Cardoso returned for the fourth over, and took four wickets in the space of five balls — meaning she had now taken five wickets off five successive deliveries across two overs, the first player in T20I history to achieve that.

Two more wickets in the sixth over took her to nine. The tenth wicket — the final Lesotho wicket — was claimed by Marianne Artur, denying Cardoso a perfect 10.

Final figures: 9/4 from 3 overs (two of them maidens). Lesotho were bowled out for 13 in 6.2 overs. Brazil won by 189 runs.

Of her nine wickets, four were bowled, four were LBW, and only one was a catch — a testament to how accurately she hit the stumps and the pad throughout.

The Record She Broke — and the One She Shattered

Bhutan’s Sonam Yeshey had only set the men’s T20I record in 2025, taking 8/7 against Myanmar. Before Cardoso, no bowler — in 15+ years of T20 international cricket — had taken more than eight wickets in an innings. She took nine. In three overs.

Not a One-Match Wonder — Brazil Are Flying

Cardoso’s record innings did not come in isolation. Brazil have been devastating in the BCA Kalahari Women’s T20I Tournament throughout.

In an earlier match against Zambia Women, Brazil posted 200/5 with Cardoso hitting a quickfire fifty and Laura Agatha making 62 — the pair sharing a 105-run partnership. Zambia were bowled out for 26 in 15.1 overs in reply, with Maria Ribeiro taking five wickets and Cardoso claiming three more. A 174-run victory.

Against Lesotho, Cardoso added to her batting reputation with her lethal pace bowling — a true all-round performance in the fullest sense.

Cricket at the Edges of the Map

What makes this story particularly compelling is the geography. A Brazilian bowler destroying a Lesotho batting line-up in Botswana for the best figures in T20I cricket history is not the story most cricket observers had circled on their calendar for April 2026. But that is precisely the point — the ICC’s Associate cricket programme has for years been quietly developing talent in football-mad countries and African nations who rarely make headlines.

Cardoso is now 21, captain of the Brazil women’s side, and the holder of a world record that has never been held by anyone else.

The record will last until someone — man or woman — takes nine wickets in a T20I innings and delivers something that, until Thursday, nobody had ever seen.