Fastest Ball in Cricket History: There have been many great bowlers in the cricket world and there have been bowlers who can regularly bowl at a speed of 150 km per hour. Even the best batsmen were baffled by the deadly speed of Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and Shane Bond. But Shoaib Akhtar’s fastest ball in the ICC 2003 World Cup will probably remain immortal in the history of this game forever. Akhtar had said that he had to work very hard to bowl the fastest ball.
Pull trucks and carts with your shoulders
Pakistani legend Shoaib Akhtar said that when a bowler bowls a ball at 155 kmph, there is a scope of increasing his speed by 5 kmph. He said, “I started running by tying tyres, but they started feeling light to me. So I started pulling small vehicles from my shoulders. Since there are less people in Islamabad, I used to pull vehicles at night. I tried my best to run at the same speed at which I used to run in the run-up. After that I started pulling trucks and used to pull them for 4-5 miles.”
Bowling on a long pitch
Akhtar said that to increase his speed, he used to bowl on a 26 yard pitch instead of 22 yards. Akhtar said, “When I started bowling on a 26 yard pitch, my speed dropped to 142-143 kmph. My target on a long pitch was to achieve a speed of 150. In those days my muscles were in very good shape and I started bowling with old balls. I used to try to hit the stumps with old balls.”
Before Shoaib Akhtar came to play in the 2003 World Cup, the record for the fastest delivery in cricket history was held by Australia’s Jeffrey Thompson. Thompson bowled at a speed of 160.6 kmph against West Indies in 1975. Before the 2003 World Cup, Akhtar had promised his teammates Saqlain Mushtaq and Azhar Mahmood that he would definitely break the record.
He broke the record but his body suffered
Eventually, during the 2003 World Cup, Shoaib Akhtar broke this historic bowling record by bowling at a speed of 161.3 kmph against England, which is equal to 100 miles per hour. But talking about his injury, he said, “I broke the record by bowling at a speed of 161.3 kmph and thought that I could bowl even faster than this. Unfortunately, after that, my body started giving up, I started having problems in my hamstring and then in my waist as well. I felt that my condition was going to get very bad, so I withdrew from the tournament.”
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