Jeff Thomson

Jeffrey Robert Thomson (born 16 August 1950 in Greenacre, New South Wales) is a former Australian cricketer. Known as "Thommo", he is considered by a lot of people in the sport as the fastest bowler of all time. He was the opening partner of fellow fast bowler Dennis Lillee; their combination was one of the most fearsome in Test cricket history. Commenting on their bowling during the 1974–75 season, wrote: "... it was easy to believe they were the fastest pair ever to have coincided in a cricket team".

Contents

• Aussie Legends Jeff Thomson
• Test career
• World Series Cricket
• Later career
• References

In 1975, during a match against the West Indies, he was timed using high-speed cameras with a speed of 160.45 km/h; one year on in 1976, he was timed at 160.58 km/h again, using conventional radar; There is speculation though, that with the available technology then, the speeds measured then were actually averaged over the length of the pitch.

Most cricketers and experts and viewers who have watched cricket from at least the 1970s rate Thomson as the fastest they ever saw. Richie Benaud rates Thomson as the fastest he has seen (as of 2010) since Frank Tyson. Australian wicket-keeper Rod Marsh kept wicket to Thomson for most of his Test career and claimed that Thomson bowled upwards of 180 km/h. Ian Chappell and Ashley Mallett have also opined the same. Thomson himself noted that he had been timed at the batsmans end of the pitch (by which time the ball has slowed) and believes had he been timed out of the hand he would have been closer to 180 km/h. Frank Tyson wrote that "at a muzzle velocity of 99.6 m.p.h. Thompson is so fast and human reaction time is so slow that scientists have calculated that the batsman has to begin playing a stroke against him more than .062 of a second before Thommo lets go of the ball".

Many of the players of the 1970s and 1980s generation also rate Thomson as the fastest they ever faced or even saw. West Indian batting legend "King" Viv Richards, by far the greatest ODI batsman of all time and often considered the greatest batsman since Don Bradman, rates Thomson as the fastest he has ever faced. Richards opinion counts for a lot, as he faced almost all the fastest bowlers of all time through the 1970s and 1980s in John Snow, Dennis Lillee, Andy Roberts, Imran Khan, Michael Holding, Sylvester Clarke, Wayne Daniel, Malcolm Marshall, Patrick Patterson, Alan Ward, Len Pascoe, Garth Le Roux, Graham Dilley etc., and even Devon Malcolm and Waqar Younis in the early 1990s, at various levels, in International matches, the WSC, and the Caribbean, Australian and England County leagues. Indian batting great Sunil Gavaskar also reckons Thomson the fastest he faced over a career spanning over 20 years. Former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd regards Thomson as the fastest bowler he has ever seen. Michael Holding, himself often considered an extremely fast bowler in his prime, believes Thomson to be the fastest he ever saw. Geoffrey Boycott rates Thomson joint fastest with Michael Holding among all the bowlers that he has seen. Martin Crowe, who faced many of the fastest of the mid and late 1980s, and Allan Donald, Waqar Younis and Devon Malcolm at their quickest in the early 1990s, rates Thomson as the fastest he ever faced (followed by Michael Holding), though he faced Thomson only in 1982 early in his own career, when Thomson was two years away from retirement.

Incidents were reported of Thomson delivering byes which hit the sight-screen behind the facing batsman on the full, after just one bounce on the pitch. These reports were mostly from the time when he was at his very fastest - the period between 1972 and 1976, long before boundary ropes began to be pulled in, which happened around 1990, though several instances are cited when this happened even after his injury till the early 1980s.

Thomson came to the fore in 1974–75 with 33 wickets in the Ashes series. Helmets and the other modern protective items for batsmen were not available at the time, and there was no restrictions on the use of the bouncer. The success of the Australian cricket team with fast bowling prompted an era when pace bowling dominated the game, at the expense of slow bowling.