The greatest fast bowlers the world has ever seen gathered in Australia in 1979 to compete in speeds and accuracy competition. Hosted by Richie Benaud, the bowlers included Imran Khan, Sarfraz Nawaz, Dennis Lillee, Michael Holding, Jeff Thompson, Andy Roberts, Richard Hadlee, Colin Croft and more…
Imran Khan was clocking an average of 138Kmph at the time.
Re: World’s Fastest Bowler Competition - 1979
Re: World's Fastest Bowler Competition - 1979
Imran 138kph? Thats slooowww!! Even Razzaq could bowl faster than that! And Thompson was supposed to be at 159kph but here his fastest was only 147. Fast bowlers were pretty slow back then.
Re: World's Fastest Bowler Competition - 1979
Not really. I think the equipment was not as accurate as the ones being used today. I wonder how fast would the current crop be on this very equipment!
Re: World's Fastest Bowler Competition - 1979
Actually people have said the equipment used then is more scientific and more accurate than the radar guns used now. See the grids behind the bowlers in the side views? They must measure how many grids the ball travels in a given interval to calculate the speed. They were using high-speed cameras even then.
Re: World's Fastest Bowler Competition - 1979
Slow and inaccurate. Funny how much faster fast bowlers have come.
Re: World's Fastest Bowler Competition - 1979
Speed is relevant to the pitch and weather conditions. This is a competition to find the fastest bowler, not the fastest ball. Given same conditions Jeff thompson was the fastest. If Shoaib Akhter were there, he would probably be clocked at slightly above thompson, not really at what he gets on a good day. Thompson was clocked at very close to 100 miles in a different test.
Speaking of equipment used to measure speed, the todays equipment may be technically advanced, but it cannot match the accuracy of this compitition because of the setup. In a real life match, you do not install equipments behind the batsman and focus just on measuring speed and accuracy. The whole setup in this competition was to be able to measure speed accurately.