Thommo - how quick was he?'

[Khota]

A good time elapse video should give an answer. Hard to gauge. But do remember both Brett Lee and Sohaib had questionable actions which enabled them to reach 100 mph. Not allowing arm to bend makes it difficult to reach those high speeds.

[rkt.india]

12 minutes ago, Khota said:

A good time elapse video should give an answer. Hard to gauge. But do remember both Brett Lee and Sohaib had questionable actions which enabled them to reach 100 mph. Not allowing arm to bend makes it difficult to reach those high speeds.

You think guys in the past were not doing that?

[Deleted_User_1]

Bharat Arun >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Thommo

[Deleted_User_1]

Dodda Ganesh >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Thommo

[Muloghonto]

7 hours ago, rkt.india said:

they are not better expert than us.

lol. a little full of yourself, arnt you ?? Sorry, if you are not a professional cricketer with first hand experience of these guys, you are not an expert.

 

[Muloghonto]

7 hours ago, rkt.india said:

Running has nothing to do with bowling speeds. NO runner can run whole day at the same.  Same way no one can same pace whole day. 

two words: momentum transfer. If Running had nothing to do with bowling speeds, fast bowlers wouldn't be running in to bowl. they'd just stand and bowl fast.

 

[Muloghonto]

5 hours ago, Rightarmfast said:

Dude, what does that even mean???

" a 2d image projection of a 3d object to gauge distance." You seem to be obsessed with this point. Did you just learn it?

I can accept that its tough to gauge the speed of ball merely by looking at a video, but your logic about us judging the distance of the keeper is hilarious. That can be gauged very easily. You can also just try to judge the boundary behind the wicketkeeper, as a matter of fact. Which gives indication of the distance and speed.

you have no idea of what you are talking of and its complete nonsense. You cannot gauge how far the wicketkeeper is from a batsman  compared to the length of the pitch, just from tv. Nobody can. Its called an optical illusion, because you are trying to gauge depth from a mode that has no depth.

I've mentioned this many times in the past and i suppose if you knew basic science, you'd not make such absurd observations.

 

[Muloghonto]

6 hours ago, MultiB48 said:

there is no evidence of holding nearly qualifying for olympics nor of holding bowling exceptionally fast and how are you judging all this if we cant even judge the distance of the wk how can we judge the speed/bounce of a bowler .

Tony Cozier's book is the evidence. 

How do i know ? i trust the experts - people who've played with him, faced him, etc. Holding was the fast bowler who was freakishly good at maintaining his pace. Just like Walsh was the fast bowler who was freakishly durable. 

 

[maniac]

Overrated....even the average IPL slogger would just move his back leg across and smack him.

 

even 125k without helmets etc can look super phaaast. Thompson at max was probably a 140k bowler...English and Aussies usually overrate their players. Hear Ian Chappell speak, mention any great player and he always has an equivalent player who played Sheffield shield in Australia who was that good lol.

[Khota]

5 hours ago, rkt.india said:

You think guys in the past were not doing that?

I dont know. Growing up there were no speed guns. To me he is 90 mph type bowler no more. Actually if I am not mistaken he used be a javelin throw player who was converted to fast bowling. Compared to current bowlers he just does not look that strong either.

[Malcolm Merlyn]

[mention=6559]Malcolm Merlyn[/mention] 
Ofcourse one can- just ask all who faced him. Holding was a remarkable athlete- he came very close to making the cut for Jamaican 400m relay team. That automatically makes him one of the best runners in the world and easily, the Usain Bolt of cricket bowlers. Given how easy and pure his action was, its quite easy to see why Holding could maintain his effortless pace for so long. Not to mention, practically every batsman who's faced him, rate him as the consistently fastest guy, every spell of the way.Sure, Lillee, Thommo and maybe even Marshall at his peak were faster, in terms of their fastest balls/spells. Not by much, i may say. Holding was genuine fast. But if it was near tea on 2nd straight day of bowling and all bowlers are at 25+ overs bowled, your best bet, for the fastest spell out there, would be Holding. 
 
 Its precisely because holding was almost as much better than Lillee or Kapil or Imran at the running part, than Imran or Kapil are to us, in terms of running.
 
 

No bowler has bowled 95mph throughout the day, since speed guns have been in use regularly.There is no proof that while athletes in all other sports have got better the cricketers have gone worse.

Do you have any list of the other competitors of Holding in 1970s or 60s for that 400mt trial?You automatically make him the better runner.Lol.

No one is denying that Holding was likely a 90mph bowler.But that is not equal to bowling 95mph throughout the day.

[rkt.india]

1 hour ago, Muloghonto said:

Tony Cozier's book is the evidence. 

How do i know ? i trust the experts - people who've played with him, faced him, etc. Holding was the fast bowler who was freakishly good at maintaining his pace. Just like Walsh was the fast bowler who was freakishly durable. 

 

how did Cozier knew he was bowling 95 mph? 

Edited October 6, 2017 by rkt.india

[Muloghonto]

6 minutes ago, Malcolm Merlyn said:

No bowler has bowled 95mph throughout the day, since speed guns have been in use regularly.There is no proof that while athletes in all other sports have got better the cricketers have gone worse.

Do you have any list of the other competitors of Holding in 1970s or 60s for that 400mt trial?You automatically make him the better runner.Lol.

No one is denying that Holding was likely a 90mph bowler.But that is not equal to bowling 95mph throughout the day.

1. Saying 'no bowler has bowled 95mph through the day, since speed guns have been used regularly', is like saying 'no tennis player has served second serve aces every 2 months, since advent of hawk-eye'. So what ? We are not talking about the bell-curved player, we are talking about an unique, high end scenario.

 

2. Cricket has undergone one drastic change compared to virtually all other sport, in a very, very short period of time, i.e., 20 years or less: massive increase in travel, time zone skipping and the stress it puts on bodies. Yes, cricketers are playing about the same or even less amount of cricket days per calendar year compared to the 80s. Especially if you compare the 80s players who played County cricket, who actually played more than people do now, because county seasons were so bloody long back then.

It has also become far more coaching intense and the immediate by-product one sees, is linearity in bowling actions. An action exactly like Thommo does not exist, neither does one like Alderman or Colin Croft. While this may be statistically valid approach, in terms of 'best practices for the common bowler', it still ignores the fact that maybe in certain cases, a slightly flawed action IS the best course, because of slightly flawed physiology. 

For eg, Walsh probably had hips 10x stronger than the average man, because his entire action relied on a weird 'hip snap' to channel momentum. Sure, if you got hips like Walsh, its the most 'consistent' action to reproduce and relatively less effort but 99% people don't have such hips and you end up with piriformis or such other case.

 

3. No, i am not a cricket historian. But when people like Clyde Berry or Cozier write books, their claims on player backgrounds is usually on the money. 
Holding's 'dilemma' was whether to run 400m or to play cricket as a 17-18 year old. he chose cricket. We are talking about Jamaica here, which since the 60s has consistently produced short and mid ranged running stars, way above their puny demographic weight.

Jamaica has had probably 30 runners who'd run laps around Milkha Singh or any such desi sprinter. Thats how good they are.

Holding came very close to cracking their olympic relay team. That'd mean he is one of their top 10 runners and possibly for those couple of years, top 20/25 runner in the world. 
Translating to cricket, he is most likely the fastest/best runner to've ever stepped on a cricket field, by a country mile.

 

4. Everyone here, who thinks they are an expert from trying to extrapolate speeds by seeing how far a wicketkeeper is standing from tv, thinks its nonsense. Practically every batsman who's faced holding has said :a) he was genuinely fast   b) he was freakish, in the sense that his stock ball remained just as fast on 2nd over of 1st spell as 6th over of 4th spell of the day. 

 

Its pretty obvious, who i am going to give credibility to: armchair fans or the experts.

 

[Muloghonto]

11 minutes ago, MultiB48 said:

 

you can easily judge whether a wk is standing closer or not ,clearly you have no idea about the science of it.

Don't be an idiot. You cannot judge the distance of the wicktkeeper from the batsman, without atleast two point of reference. 
This is basic physics and easily demonstrable. 
What you are doing, is simply failing to realize your optical illusion. But its ok. lots of people think they can gauge depth in a 2d image. Its called an 'illusion' for a reason.

 

11 minutes ago, MultiB48 said:

provide evidence.

umesh ran 100 meters in 10.56sec 

 

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/625472.html

Have you always naturally been a strong athlete? 
My dad, Tilak Yadav, moved to Nagpur from his native village in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. As a youngster, he used to wrestle. He always followed a good training regime and put us through the same cycle. He would never allow us to sleep for too long. We would run 2-3km at 6am. My dad always believed in getting fresh air. I would run barefoot on the sand to improve my stamina. That helped me in my athletics from school to university level. I mainly competed in 100m, 200m, 400m hurdles, and long jump.

What is the fastest you have run 100m in?
10.56 seconds.

 

 

Sure. Good for Umesh.

 

[Muloghonto]

6 minutes ago, MultiB48 said:

read up on it properly

Er..ok.

Seems like you are yet another person who does not even realize the optical illusion of TVs...not uncommon. 

As i said, anyone who thinks they can tell how far a wicketkeeper is standing from the batsman, by seeing one and only vantage point from TV, is 100% wrong and under the influence of the optical illusion. 

This is not about how much cricket you've watched, how good your vision is, this is basic physics on how your eyes work to extrapolate 3d view from a 2d image. 

[putrevus]

The greatest batsman of his era and many consider him one of the best ever Viv said he was as fast as it gets when he got his direction right.Viv certainly knows a thing or two about facing fast bowling.

 

Thompson didn't have any other major skill other than bowling fast.DK Lillee surely knows about fast bowling.

[maniac]

I was watching the old Dev Anand flick Jewel thief with my parents...there is an item song with Tanuja(Kajol's mom)...my mom said apparently back in the day it was considered very raunchy and vulgar for a heroine to do something like that and I thought to myself....compared to the things that we see now or have access to on the internet.

 

why is this relevant? Well a guy with no

proper protective equipment and a different mindset might have been shocked to see a ball delivered over 135 and in his mind and his peers mind  that was probably the most dangerous thing ever.

 

These days we have Starc bowling 140s throughout and cranking it up to 150s and still scaring batsmen-the same batsman who leave their crease or play a crazy scoop shot to a 140k delivery. Things have evolved. So yes I would take what people in the 70s felt about Thompson etc with a pinch of salt. Also we have technology to measure the speeds now, so what people said about Thompson remains an old wives tale pretty much.

 

Would Bjon Borg of the 80s be able to take on the 100th ranked tennis player today and match up to him power by power and to his stamina...no chance whatsoever 

Edited October 6, 2017 by maniac

[Muloghonto]

1 minute ago, MultiB48 said:

one can gauge the distance on tv ,if you mean by how far the keeper is standing as in metrics then one cant say that accurately but you wont be able to do that even  in the stadium .

pataudi batted in test matches with one eye  how did he manage it if you cant judge the position of the ball in 2d ?

even 3d images are illusions .

read up on it before sprouting nonsense.

1. Yes, you will be able to extrapolate in a stadium, very accurately, if you have trained to tell apart distances. For e.g., scouting. There are many, many people who can see any object in a 100-200m distance and be accurate, within centimetres, on how close/far they are. A common skill for e.g., amongst hunters. 

You physically cannot guess, whether the wicketkeeper is 10,15 or 20 meters behind the batsman , from just one camera angle from TV. 

 

2. Because having one eye does not make your vision 2d. Your vision in one eye is still 3d vision, it simply has problem triangulating a moving target,due to lack of primary triangulation method (2nd eye). But, as one-eyed people show, it is a relatively easy adaptation for the brain. 

 

The only ones spouting 100% nonsense,are people who are trying to judge how far a wicketkeeper is standing behind the batsman, from one camera angle. Classic case of optical illusion. 

[Vijy]

Although the pitches, lack of helmets, etc. might be a factor, I think Thommo was one of the fastest since post-WW II.

[putrevus]

^^ That is utter nonsense, speed is speed it doesn't matter what era it is,human reflexes have not changed that much batsmen judge speed based on time they get to play fast bowling rather than speed gun readings.

 

Every batsmen who faced either Thompson or Lillee or WI fast bowlers know what it felt like when facing real intimidating fast bowling.

 

That does not mean Starc , Akthar or Lee were/are that not as  fast as them. WI fast bowlers on 1980s had accuracy and bouncy to go with their speed that's why they were deadly .

 

Borg wouldn't drop a game against todays 100 if both were playing with wooden rackets.Borg was famous for his stamina and ability to sustain high speed for five sets.