Myth that Thommo could bowl much faster than the others is just funny. He was certainly up there, and may have bowled a delivery that was faster, but all we can verify is what we have, so it's stupid to give him The Fastest Ever Title, when we know there's something of a threshold around the 100 mph mark for multiple bowlers, and we don't have a measurement where he goes beyond it. So it's likely he maxes out around that range, not some number much higher.
It's funny, because there's the exact same myth around Nolan Ryan. They say he pitched 108, at a time which just so happened before we had the modern type speed guns. So they extrapolate from the 100.8 actually measured speed that he threw because they say it measured distance across, and not out of hand. The actual record is set by a more modern pitcher Aroldis Chapman who specializes in outings of not more than around 15-20 pitches, and sits at just shy of 106 mph. Any of this sound familiar? Ryan, while one of the fastest pitchers of all time likely maxed out in the low 100s, which is where a couple of other modern verified "fastest pitchers" max out.
What is even crazier, is there are fans of even older players (Tyson in cricket, Feller in baseball) who even go to frame by frame analysis for even more ludicrous claims. It's a lot of effort, but almost certainly bunk. All we're doing is going to less and less precise speed methodologies, being analyzed by interested parties. My next "record" is going to be that Spofforth bowled 120 mph, by measuring the vibes off Neville Cardus's pen.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's physically impossible per se for older pre 90s bowlers to have bowled just as fast as more modern ones, just find it exceedingly unlikely. Records are set and then broken, in every other speed sport. It's amazing Shoaib has held it for as long as he has, but there's no doubt his will be broken as well by someone just as crazy and probably a bit more advantaged. As an analogy, how many of us doubt the actuality of Bolt's 100m record, and how many think it won't be broken for the next 100 years? It's the length of time that they do hold it before inevitably being broken that makes them the speed "GOATs".
There was no meaningful record before the introduction of the modern style speed guns, and that's just a fact. So why are we thinking that only the hard leather projectile hurling sports are some kind of exception in records being essentially set in "reverse" (faster speeds the farther back in time we dig, and less precise methodology we use). There's no reason to think most of these guys gave too much of a damn anyway about their "one rep max", because they never had a speed gun that would put that measure in their mind. They simply had to be effective bowlers, and if speed was their ticket to that, then that's what they did. But why would they become as speed gun obsessed as Shoaib, when there was no speed gun? The whole notion is absurd.
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