Jeff Thomson

Jeff Thomson bowled a delivery timed at 160.45 km/h in December 1975 — measured with the most accurate technology available at the time — a mark that, alongside a slinging action nobody else has successfully copied, has kept him in the conversation for fastest bowler in cricket history for half a century.

The action that defied coaching manuals

Born in Greenacre, Sydney, in August 1950, Thomson generated his pace not from a classical high-arm action but from a low, whipping sling — influenced, he said, by his boyhood javelin throwing — releasing the ball almost from shoulder height with minimal work from his fingers, so it rarely swung or seamed — it simply arrived faster than batsmen expected. He made his first-class debut for New South Wales in 1972-73 and his Test debut against Pakistan that same season, after only five first-class games, then moved to Queensland, where the hard, bouncy pitches suited his reliance on pace and bounce over movement. Wicketkeepers and umpires reported deliveries so quick they hit the sight screen after a single bounce, mostly during his fastest years, 1972 to 1976.

Lillee and Thomson

Paired with Dennis Lillee as Australia's new-ball attack, Thomson formed the most feared opening partnership Test cricket had seen. In the 1974-75 Ashes, played before helmets were part of the game and with no restrictions on bouncers, Thomson took 33 wickets as Australia won 4-1; Wisden wrote of the pair that "it was easy to believe they were the fastest pair ever to have coincided in a cricket team," a reputation Thomson did nothing to soften when he told a television interviewer, "I enjoy hitting a batsman more than getting him out. I like to see blood on the pitch" — a line a Sydney newspaper turned into its own rhyme that Ashes summer: "if Thomson don't get ya, Lillee must." He was banned from professional cricket for a period in 1979 after striking a soccer referee, an episode typical of a career that never lacked incident on or off the field.

How fast was fast?

In December 1975, researchers from the University of Western Australia used photo-sonic cameras to clock Thomson's fastest delivery at 160.45 km/h during a Test against West Indies at the WACA — faster than Dennis Lillee, Andy Roberts or Michael Holding measured in the same study, and a figure a follow-up study the next year put as high as 160.6 km/h. In 1979, Thomson won a nationally televised fastest-bowler contest, his quickest delivery measured at 147.9 km/h, ahead of a field that included Michael Holding and Imran Khan. His wicketkeeper, Rod Marsh, and his captain, Ian Chappell, have both said Thomson bowled as fast as 180 km/h in his prime — a claim no known measurement supports and modern analysts consider implausible — while West Indies captain Clive Lloyd and fast bowler Michael Holding, who both played through the fastest bowling the 1970s and 1980s produced, have separately rated Thomson the quickest they ever saw, a judgement batsman Viv Richards also shared. The official fastest delivery on record today belongs to Pakistan's Shoaib Akhtar, at 161.3 km/h in 2003, but Thomson's speed was recorded using 1970s photo-sonic technology not directly comparable to a modern radar gun, which is why many of his contemporaries still argue he was the fastest of all.

Career figures

Format	Matches	Wickets	Average	Best
Tests	51	200	28.00	6/46
ODIs	50	55	35.30	4/67

Legacy

Thomson played Test cricket until 1985 and was inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2016. Along with Lillee, Holding and Andy Roberts, he defined an era in which genuine, sustained fast bowling became the most feared weapon in the game — a template every express bowler since has been measured against. He remained fast well past his playing days: coaching Queensland's bowlers in the early 1990s, he was still clocked quicker in the nets, at 42, than any bowler on the state's books. Fellow fast-bowling great Michael Holding is also among our cricketing legends.