Very entertaining, but getting back to reality this is nothing more than a net session shown in prime time to advertise pizza, fried chicken and coca-cola, no surprise it was never tried again. If we are going to gauge athletes on their performances in the nets or at the gym then nobody is ever going to measure up to actual competition. Hanging a 'worlds fastest bowler competition' label on it doesn't make it so. Having been a fast bowler that could break stumps back in my younger days I can tell you that the nets are a training tool to develop strength and stamina and refine technique but nobody ever gets more than 90 percent of maximum performance, you need to a batsman at the other end and something to play for to achieve that extra 10 percent motivation. A fast bowler in a Test match or any serious competition needs to bowl for about 3 hours max over 5-6 days and be at 100 percent every ball, even then you only get top pace perhaps 2 balls per over over a 4-5 over spell, even the fittest athletes cannot do better. These guys had been invited to a competition which was written into their contract to perform in a contest they obviously could not win, Thomson had played no form of organised cricket for 8 months but everybody in the game knew that nothing they could do would ever come close to this guy. Yes there was a nice cash prize for the 'winner' but for everybody else there was literally nothing but the chance of getting injured from over extending and sitting out the rest of the season on the injury bench. Enjoy it but don't use it as any realistic measure of reality.
…and then there’s Thommo. The only slinger amongst them. Not a popular action because it’s inaccurate, but generates the most speed. But Thommo mastered it as much as one could and that’s what makes him the fastest and, on his day, the most lethal fast bowler ever.
1979 - One player springs to mind immediately Jeff Thomson but don’t forget Harold Larwood in the 30’s and Frank Tyson in the 50’s for we will never know how fast they bowled.
World 🌎 no 1 fastest boller Sylvester class no 1 Patric Petersen no 2 Shoheb Akhter 💚 no 3 Breat Lee no 4 Jeff Thomson no 5 Andy Roberts no 6 Maikle holding no.7 Imran Khan no.8 No bady indian fast boller 😂😂😂
It's strange watching Holding and Lillee bowling at just above Darren Stevens pace, in the high 120s kph (around 78 mph). Amazing how cricketers have evolved in the 40 years since, adding more than 20 kph at the top end of fast bowling. Edit - should've watched more than the first 2 balls! They got quicker.
Did anyone else have the Brett Lee fast bowling VHS as a kid like me? It also included the results of this competition and an interview with Jeff. He said he wasn't even well during this competition.
From a book titled the Quicks by Robert Drane. Came out in 2022: It’s Thommo’s effect we’ll remember. His shattering, pillaging, trucking-well effectiveness. Who cares about statistics? Thommo doesn’t. His influence on a game - on the game - was enormous. Why? Because he was not only inhumanly fast; he made that rock do unprecedentedly vicious things, with steepling, blast-off bounce, from what was previously considered a good length. Good batsmen had their faces, ribcages and life-priorities rearranged. Opponents who’d just come off triumphant series were reduced to pallid, frail wraiths. He made batsmen who dined on good bowlers want to apologise for hitting him to the boundary. Not one worthy archrival stood when he was in the mood to prove batting was a hoax, its greatest practitioners overrated. Speed guns? Anyone who saw him, or faced him, especially pre-1977, would be amused at the ‘fastest man in history’ contest between Brett Lee and Shaoib Akhtar. Thomson was officially measured, long after the 1976 on-field collision that ruined his bowling shoulder. Two years before that, he’d already hurt it during a tennis match. The video assessment happened during season 1978-79, when he didn’t play, and had been sitting around drinking beer for months. In fact, he put down a beer to participate in the little exercise. Against Holding, Lillee, Roberts, Khan and LeRoux, he clocked the quickest, around 150, hardly extending himself. The Wild Man surprisingly also proved most accurate. He’d been unofficially clocked three years earlier, at over 160. Lillee, by the way, was timed at mid-150s then, after his comeback with reduced pace. Ian Chappell, never given to exaggeration, ignores ‘studies’, measurements, or historical judgements. He believed there was Thomson, then daylight, then the frightening Holding. ‘He had another gear’. Rod Marsh was in the front row, as Thommo’s wicketkeeper. I spent a week with him at the Cricket Academy in 1998. He was effusive then about a kid named Brett Lee. Later, he put the Lee-Akhtar ‘duel’ in perspective: ‘If they’re bowling 160, Thommo bowled 180.’ Clive Lloyd faced or played with them all. ‘There’s only one way to play him’, the fearless and ferocious Big Cat said once in his laconic way, ‘and that’s to get up the other end.’
Given accounts by people who faced these guys I think it's a pretty safe bet that they were all over 150km/h by the way we measure today with Thomson likely squeaking past 160km/h on a good day. 150+ is bloody quick but I suspect the guys heralded as "the quickest" were all likely peaking in the very low 160s, maybe even quicker. 150-155 is a good pace for a quick these days and that isn't something I think has changed since the early days of fast bowling. The danger 40+ years ago was the pitch, pitch standards and consistency have drastically changed since then. I would love to see all the greats at their prime duking it out to see who is fastest by today's measuring standards. I have a sneaking suspicion that the legendary quicks of old were a hell of a lot faster than we think.
Jeff Thompson is always spoken about as the fastest to have ever played the game. He is reported to have bowled at over 160km/h, he was well short of that speed here. In the last twenty years we have seen Aktar , Lee and Tait bowl at 160km/h. Is there a difference in the technology used that makes modern bowlers to appear by measurement to be faster?
This era of cricket was so exciting to watch. I would have been around 10 years old and was glued to the TV during test matches. Every nation had super stars and personalities. Is it me or is the cricket of today no where near as entertaining.
Seems speed measuring machine giving wrong and slower reading. The speed of 140+ is common now a days as shown by speed measuring machines. I am damn sure that bowlers in 70s are quicker than today's bowlers.
There’s OBVIOUSLY a difference between how (or at what point) these speeds were measured - versus today (2023-24). Roberts at 138, Imran at 139, Holding at 141.. and Thomson at 147.. is quite laughable. These were all express pace and today, even medium pacers are clocked in the mid to high 130s. My guesstimate is that the speeds of these 1970s legends would be 20kph quicker - if measured using today’s technique.
Having watched Garth Le Roux in the 80s extensively,these speeds look bang on the mark. Whats intersting is not the actual speeds but the relative differences between the bowlers.. Imran was on average 2nd quickest behind Thommo with Holding and Roberts behind him. I also read about another bowling speed test conducted by an Australian university using radar equipment in 1980 or so on Michael Holding and he topped out around 138km,so its pretty similar to this. Very quick foe the times rhey played in.
