Pace List

[BhupinderSingh]

Shoaib Akhtar,Brett Lee & Shaun Tait are the quickest bowlers ever recorded but I think fastest ever is Imran Khan.He was recorded at 92 mph(even if I'm wrong,it was still above 90 mph) when he was well over 30 years of age(34 probably & stuck by some serious injuries as well).So, at the age of between 24-30(thats when he developed himself as a genuine fast bowler), he would've been close to 105 mph.A few people also believe that before back injury in 1994-1995,Waqar was could also bowl above 100 mph.Anyway,this Waqar might be an assumption just in the case Tyson & some others.And what mentined abobe about Imran Khan is just my personal belief (of course I'm not sure about it as nothing can be said with surity about bowlers of past who were never clocked in access of 100 mph).At the end,Shoaib Akhtar,Brett Lee,Jeff Thommson & Frank Tyson are regarded to be quickest ever bowlers bydifferent scholl of thoughts (especially) on this forum.

 

[deeps]

Ahem... I think one Waqar Younis deserves a mention

 

[open365]

I reckon Tyson's pace is over rated a touch, i've read reports by former players that say he was bowling 105mph+ which imo is impossible.

 

[archie mac]

Ahem... I think one Waqar Younis deserves a mention

For sure, the fast inswinging yorker must have been very close to 100mph, I should have also mentioned Donald was very quick in his prime

 

[The Sean]

For sure, the fast inswinging yorker must have been very close to 100mph, I should have also mentioned Donald was very quick in his prime

I remember that just before SA toured Australia for the first time after the ban in 93-94, the talk with Donald touring was that he was the second fastest bowler in the world, having just been timed at 149km/h, whereas Waqar had just been timed at 150. I personally believe both of them probably topped out a few Ks quicker than that.

 

[Burgey]

Imran, I think, came 2nd or 3rd to Thommo in that fastest bowler comp in the 70s. May not have been accurate measurements, but if they were using the same method, at least gives an idea as to who was faster than whom.

Lillee pre-his back injury was apparently terrifyingly fast as well. I recall the comment in, I think, Wisden from the 72 Ashes series that "He has that rarest ability to make the crowd gasp when he bowls, a sign of pure speed". Great line. Wonder where he would rank.

I wonder will they ever be able to devise some form of software where they can input old footage and get some sort of reasonably accurate measure of bowling speeds?

 

[archie mac]

I remember that just before SA toured Australia for the first time after the ban in 93-94, the talk with Donald touring was that he was the second fastest bowler in the world, having just been timed at 149km/h, whereas Waqar had just been timed at 150. I personally believe both of them probably topped out a few Ks quicker than that.

Yes they were both scary quick, and Waqar cleaned up the Aussie tail better and faster than anyone I can ever remember when he toured here in his prime

 

[adharcric]

Imran, I think, came 2nd or 3rd to Thommo in that fastest bowler comp in the 70s. May not have been accurate measurements, but if they were using the same method, at least gives an idea as to who was faster than whom.

Lillee pre-his back injury was apparently terrifyingly fast as well. I recall the comment in, I think, Wisden from the 72 Ashes series that "He has that rarest ability to make the crowd gasp when he bowls, a sign of pure speed". Great line. Wonder where he would rank.

I wonder will they ever be able to devise some form of software where they can input old footage and get some sort of reasonably accurate measure of bowling speeds?

Even in the fastest bowler comp, somebody mentioned that bowling short-pitched deliveries would make you look slow compared to others bowling full at the stumps.

 

[Burgey]

For sure. I also tend to think that the guys who are taller are at a bit of a disadvantage on the radar gun as well, as their trajectory is not as flat.
Like when people say McGrath wasn't quick - in his earlier years he was clocked as pretty quick, iirc, and even until he retired, he continued to trouble batsmen with his bouncer, which suggests that he was under-rated in the pace department.

 

[Bouncer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBGQyMZEDjo

35 Year Old in his last tournament(at that time)

Look at his bowling in Semi final. I have not seen any 35 year old fast bowler hitting the stumps with that much force than he did in this spell, which at that time going to be his last home game. Imran was seriously fast, if didnt get injured, would have broken many more bowling records.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Double Post.Anyway,Imran is one of the most underrated pacers of alltime & is best bowler ever in my books

 

[Richard]

Like when people say McGrath wasn't quick - in his earlier years he was clocked as pretty quick, iirc, and even until he retired, he continued to trouble batsmen with his bouncer, which suggests that he was under-rated in the pace department.

McGrath was clocked above 90mph a couple of times in the 1999 WC.

 

[Richard]

Not exact measurements, I just want some rough ones. Were they around 90mph or 95mph or 105mph?

No, the truth is no-one will ever know. There are suggestions that bowlers before Larwood were nothing like the pace of what we know as "fast" today. Those most noted, IIRR, for their pace were the likes of Charles Kortright, Charles Harenc and Samuel Redgate. But there are hundreds of others.

It's very possible that before Larwood "fast" (ie, what we now know as 90mph or so) wasn't anywhere near as fast as it is now, and more late-70s. Larwood, in all likelihood, was the first to bowl at 90mph, but even then it's very debateable for some types whether he was any faster than the likes of Kortright and Harenc.

The truth is, even in the 1970s and 1980s and most of the 1990s, when good quality footage exists of some bowlers (Snow, Lillee, Willis, Thomson, Roberts, Holding, Marshall, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Allan Donald, PS de Villiers, etc.), speed of delivery was not timed accurately, and therefore we simply don't know how fast they really were. The best we can do is guess that people had always had the ability to bowl about as quick as those who succeeded them, and that seems, to me, a reasonable thing to presume. The requirements to bowl at speed have not changed.

The only exception is Tyson. People say it'd not be possible to bowl at 105mph. If Bradman hadn't averaged 99.94 everyone, and I mean everyone, would believe that too to be impossible. The feats of Bradman could be recorded by the technology of the day; those of Tyson could not. This doesn't mean they couldn't have happened.

There are freaks in every area of sport. Never know, one day there may be another Bradman. Tyson was never timed accurately, but did bruise batsmen through pads, which no-one else has ever done, and was estimated by some people (Richie Benaud for instance) to be notably much faster than anything else they'd ever seen. Now you can't put this into mph, but as I say - you can guess that normal "fast" (eg the speeds of Statham, Trueman, Lindwall and Miller) was about 90mph, and that he was notably quicker than this, and routinely (on that one tour if never again) beat top-class batsmen for sheer speed, and this in itself is incredibly unusual.

 

[Manee]

Thank you for the concise answer, I guess making a list was a bit far fetched.

 

[honestbharani]

Thank you for the concise answer, I guess making a list was a bit far fetched.

not really... I think it was a good effort, mate.


Only thing is that people should know that this is mostly just assumptions and guess-work but that must be obvious as such.... We are only giving approximate speeds of the bowlers based on what has been said/written about them, unless we have seen those guys.... Nothing much wrong with that, AFAIC...

 

[Richard]

The point is, it's dangerous giving approximate speeds to anything more exact than 10mph, if not even more...

I'd not be happy saying anything more than "probably about 80mph... probably about 90mph..."

Even then, the human eye is a notoriously poor judge of speed. Before the 1998 series in England, Donald was generally thought to be about the same speed as Pollock - the the two were timed and Donald was often a good 10mph faster.

Also, the speed off the pitch makes a huge difference, especially when you're batting. Some bowlers only bowl at 80mph, but because they lose so little off the wicket can seem faster than someone who bowls at 85mph but loses a fair bit off the pitch.

The example I always use of this is Flintoff and Harmison.

 

[funnygirl]

Michael Holding was very fast and the fastest spell was against Geoffery boycott .That was the fastest spell by any bowler ever as confirmed by the greats .There was no speedometer ,so it is difficult to confirm ,but ones eyes can judge that fiery pace .

 

[Richard]

They can't, though, really.

We can know only that Holding was still capable of hitting 86mph in his late 40s, though, which suggests he might well have been up at the 100mph sort of speed in 1976 (the year he himself reckoned he bowled quickest, though he was only 22 at the time) and, possibly, in 1981, the year of The Over.

 

[Jungle Jumbo]

Is it not possible for some statisticans to measure the speeds to within a couple of mph of old bowlers, based on the length of time it takes for the ball to travel from bowler to batsman? Even grainy video would work if slowed.

 

[Richard]

More like to the nearest 10mph, IIRR.

So we can know Holding was somewhere between 90 and 100mph - big deal, I think we could fairly safely guess that anyway.

EDIT: this sounded just a bit harsh, wasn't intended so in your direction George.