The Fastest Bowler ever?

[sayon basak]

The fastest ball in this match was 160.7 kmph, which is 99.87 mph.
Only one time the 100 mph barrier has been broken since Lee-Akhtar.

 

[Slifer]

Patrick Patterson.

 

[subshakerz]

Any proof of him actually being super fast? It is quite normal for bowlers to praise their friends and colleagues

TA Sekhar was called the fastest bowler in the world by Kris Srikanth in 1983 and even Holding said he was as quick as the WI pacers back then

Carl Hooper said the only time he was afraid of his physical safety was facing Zahid because he was that fast.

 

[Coronis]

Was talking about general people outside CW.

Pretty sure if there was a poll outside CW Broad would comfortably win.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Bond wasn’t as fast as the other three

Lockie might be faster than Bond. Gary Barlett (tearaway from the 60s) was perhaps NZ's fastest. Young Adam Milne was quick too.

 

[sayon basak]

Pretty sure if there was a poll outside CW Broad would comfortably win.

Ok I may not be aware.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Patrick Patterson and Charles Kortright should be on the list. Perhaps Gary Bartlett too.

 

[sayon basak]

Fastest deliveries in IPL history:-
Shaun Tait= 157.71 kmph
Lockie Ferguson= 157.3 kmph
Umran Malik= 157.0 kmph
Mayank Yadav= 156.7 kmph
Anrich Nortje= 156.22 kmph

Not sure whether they count or not.

 

[Johan]

why won't they?

 

[Line and Length]

I've only seen clips of Frank Tyson, but I believe him to be as fast as any,
His fast bowling gave him the nickname "Typhoon Tyson", and despite his short career he achieved status as the fastest England bowler in living memory. Don Bradman called him "the fastest bowler I have ever seen" and Richie Benaud agreed. Tom Graveney wrote 'I cannot believe any bowler was faster than Tyson at that time'. When fielding in the slips he had 'to stand 40 yards off the bat, and still. the ball was often going over our heads from edged shots'.
More recently, Dickie Bird the famous England umpire wrote, "He was certainly the quickest bowler I ever seen through the air, and on one occasion the quickest bowler I never saw through the air".
Tyson himself claimed that he could bowl at 119 mph (192 km/h), but this cannot be proven.

 

[sayon basak]

Harold Larwood was rated as possibly the fastest bowler of all time in a book "The Fast Men" by David Frith (Corgi Books, 1977, p114). It quotes a recorded speed of 96mph (154.5 kph), although it is not clear how this speed was obtained.

The same book says that both Frank Tyson and Brian Statham were timed at just under 90mph (144.8kph).

How reliable are these numbers?

 

[sayon basak]

International Bowling Speeds

 

[DrWolverine]

Fastest deliveries in IPL history:-
Shaun Tait= 157.71 kmph
Lockie Ferguson= 157.3 kmph
Umran Malik= 157.0 kmph
Mayank Yadav= 156.7 kmph
Anrich Nortje= 156.22 kmph

Not sure whether they count or not.

It should imo

 

[Slifer]

I know we can't include everyone but I believe South Africa's Brett Schultz was pretty fast as well.

 

[Line and Length]

The same book says that both Frank Tyson and Brian Statham were timed at just under 90mph (144.8kph).

How reliable are these numbers?

This would be from a test conducted in NZ:
"At the Aeronautical College in Wellington, New Zealand in 1955 metal plates were attached to a cricket ball and a sonic device was used to measure their speed, with Tyson's bowling measured at 89 mph (143 km/h), but he was wearing three sweaters on a cold, damp morning and used no run up. Statham bowled at 87 mph (140 km/h)."

Clearly Tyson was capable of much quicker speeds.

 

[sayon basak]

How reliable are these numbers?

This would be from a test conducted in NZ:
"At the Aeronautical College in Wellington, New Zealand in 1955 metal plates were attached to a cricket ball and a sonic device was used to measure their speed, with Tyson's bowling measured at 89 mph (143 km/h), but he was wearing three sweaters on a cold, damp morning and used no run up. Statham bowled at 87 mph (140 km/h)."

Clearly Tyson was capable of much quicker speeds.

Is this the same way they came up with Larwood's 96 mph?

 

[Line and Length]

Is this the same way they came up with Larwood's 96 mph?

I believe they used frame by frame clips to come up with this figure.

 

[sayon basak]

Could it be possible that Jeff Thompson's world record of 160.5km/h was broken 40 years before if was set? If mythology is to be believed then the English pace kings, Larwood, Tyson and Trueman were faster again. If Thommo can be trusted, then he bowled much quicker than 160 anyway.

One of the many beauties of cricket is its unchangeability. One of these is that the distance between popping creases has remained unchanged for over a century - 22 yards.
It got us thinking, could a comparison of bowling speeds be made between eras using archival footage of the bowler in stride and at the moment of delivery? Surely by timing the ball from the moment it left the hand to the moment it arrived at the batsman we could obtain an approximate figure.

So given that VHS video works reliably at 25 frames per second, we adapted the sample to kilometres per hour and applied it to the many fast bowlers from different eras of whom action footage still exists.
From the movies we obtained, both Fred Trueman and Frank Tyson were found to bowl at 10 frames, putting them as high at 159.12km/h with an average of 152.63. While Thommo and Ray Lindwall were clocked at 11 frames putting their peaks in the low 150's with an average of 139. Keith Miller and Wes Hall were throwing them down in 12 dazzling frames at an average of 127.3 but the variant between venom was high with each."

Was Trueman really that fast? Or that is just Tyson singlehandedly contributing to those numbers?

 

[DrWolverine]

Those speeds are not reliable.

Speed guns became quite accurate only around late 1990s

 

[DrWolverine]