Jeff Thomson hurled a cricket ball at 160 km/h with a javelin thrower's sling
Most fast bowlers show the batter the ball as they run in. Jeff Thomson hid it behind his right knee, then slung it like a javelin. In 1975 high-speed cameras in Perth clocked him at over 160 kilometres per hour, the quickest delivery measured up to then, and batters of his era rank him the fastest they ever faced.
His action was his secret. He learned the sling from his father, and his old javelin throwing clearly shaped it: a fairly short run-up, then a whip that started accelerating the ball from unusually low down. He barely used his fingers to swing or seam the ball, relying instead on raw pace and steep bounce off hard Australian pitches. His own summary was that he just rolled up and went whang. The batter John Benaud described the late moment of delivery as a kind of Swan Lake crossover, with the ball vanishing behind the knee.
Measurement backed the legend. In December 1975, researchers from the University of Western Australia filmed four leading fast bowlers with photo-sonic cameras, and Thomson came out on top at 160.45 kilometres per hour, ahead of Andy Roberts. A follow-up in 1976 recorded 160.6. His wicketkeeper Rod Marsh insisted he went beyond 180, though that seems all but impossible given later records. Reports tell of byes that bounced once and struck the sight screen behind the batter.
His career began with a secret. Called up for his first Test against Pakistan in 1972, he bowled wildly and took no wickets, and only later did it emerge that he had played with a broken bone in his foot. Recruited to Queensland by Greg Chappell, he returned in the 1974–75 Ashes to form a terrifying partnership with Dennis Lillee, inspiring a newspaper rhyme warning that if Thomson did not get you, Lillee must. He took 33 wickets that series before hurting his shoulder in a social tennis match.
A collision with a teammate in 1976 dislocated his collarbone, and he was never quite as quick again. Yet in 1979 he won all 10,000 dollars of a televised speed and accuracy contest, later admitting he bowled full tosses to keep the ball fast. Even at 42, as Queensland's bowling coach, he outpaced the state's current bowlers in the nets.
Source: Jeff Thomson
