Well I haven't either, but I'll act like I have.I am afraid I cant claim to have personal knowledge of anyone's speed. I have neither played any of them nor measured anyone's speeed myself
Ha, why would that be? You get freaks in every ability, and I don't see why someone shouldn't be able to bowl 5mph quicker than anything that has been bowled before, especially since you never say him bowl. Nobody ever knows what speed Tyson or Larwood bowled at, and never will do.
Well certainly when he was young and at his peak he was one of the fastest ever, but it was the swing that made him so lethal.
No-one ever accurately timed him until the 1999\2000 season, but I think it's fairly safe to assume he would've been 95-7mph tops in his early 1990s heyday.
TBH I've always been wholly sceptical about the entire thing - it was not possible to make a decent measurement until 1998, and anything before then I tend to disregard.
Because not only would that be the faster cricket ball ever bowled, but would be faster than even the baseball pitchers, which on average are much faster than cricket bowlers. Very highly unlikely, and I would bet almost anything that he wasn't.
Like you said it wasn't perfect, but that would not surprise me even one bit if I found out guys like Tyson were mid eighties, or at the most, high eighties-ninety.iamdavid said:
Because it annoys me when people compare guys from 1930s to now, and somehow try to argue that even though in every other sport people got faster, stronger, that cricket fast bowlers somehow didn't.
Not surprising to be frank. The word of the more experienced (to put it politely) cricket followers must always be taken with a huge handful of salt. They have a way of bigging up players from their time.In about 2001 Inside Edge (Australian Cricket magazine now 'Inside Cricket') ran an interesting little feature on the fastest bowlers from down the years and they attempted to determine just how quick the bowlers of yesteryear were by timing the amount of frames on a video from point of release to ball reaching the batsman and then working out how quick it woulda been at release. Or something similar I cant remember the exact details and Ive just spent a good 5 minutes scouring my room and cant find the magazine
They didnt claim the results to be completely accurate it was just done for fun...but what they proclaimed was that majority of Larwoods deliveries were no faster than about 128kph (marginally slower than Glenn McGrath's pace), while the likes of Miller and Lindwall hit the mid 130's but no higher.
T'was interesting.
But why should they? There's one basic requirement to bowl fast - a fast arm. Nothing else really matters (or is so simple that it doesn't even need any thought - ie a long and\or fast run-up and maximum effort) so there's no logical reason to suspect the fastest bowlers of the 1930s weren't the same speed as the fastest bowlers nowadays IMO.
Says more about the quality of the pads.
I dont think they were turn of the century pads, SS.
Fast bowling is a strange thing though, the fundamentals remain the same. Moreover, while a lot is made of weight training and all that, I dont think it would have as much impact as it would have in say, sprinting. Besides, the fast bowlers of yesteryear were not weaklings but physically strong men, and though while not gym bunnies they had a great deal of functional strength (Larwood for example working in mines) which combined with natural 'elasticity' gave them the ability to bowl fast. I have no trouble believing that Larwood and Tyson were as fast as people say they were, but were they faster as some modern quicks? Thats harder to say.
Com'mon, Jack. You faced Lol, for goodness sake.
