On this day: Shoaib Akhtar officially breaks the 100 m/h barrier

For 22 years, Australian pacer Jeff Thompson’s 99.8 mile/hour delivery in 1975 remained the fastest recorded ball in cricket and it looked as though it would remain as unsurpassable as his countrymen Don Bradman’s Test average of 99.94.

But in April of 2002, Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar surpassed him, breaching the 100 m/h barrier during an ODI against New Zealand in Lahore, clocking 100.04 mph.

But ICC didn’t recognise that record, saying the technology used to measure the speed of the ball was not up to par.

This denial set a fire under the belly of Shoaib, who was determined to make the record officially his own in the 2003 ICC World Cup.

“I told my teammates Saqlain [Mushtaq] and Azhar [Mahmood] that I will break the record in the World Cup,” Shoaib Akhtar told Sportskeeda in an interview in 2022.

In that interview, Akhtar claimed that he followed a rigorous training schedule to break the 100 m/h barrier, which included pulling vehicles and bowling on 26-yard pitches.

“I began by running with tires but soon realised that they are light. Next, I started pulling small vehicles with my shoulders. There is less public in Islamabad, so I used to pull vehicles in the night. I used to match its speed with the pace of my run-up. I realised that the vehicle is also small, so I started pulling a truck. I used to pull a truck for 4-5 miles.

“When I bowled on 26-yard strips, my speed came down to 142-143 kph. But my aim remained to touch 150 kph on 26-yard surfaces. My muscles were in great shape back then and I started bowling with old, worn-out balls. I was aiming to hit the wickets with those old balls.

“I gradually moved back to bowling with comparatively newer balls. I was playing with the mechanics of the body. This procedure went on for two months and I started hitting 150 kph.

“When I bowled in the nets during the 2003 World Cup, batters were telling me – ‘you’ll kill us, you are bowling so quick. What have you done to increase your speed so much?’ I told them that I have trained very hard because I want to break the 100-miles barrier.”

The moment finally arrived in the fourth over of Pakistan’s match against England. Shoaib clocked 153.3km/h, 158.4km/h, 158.5km/h, 157.4km/h and 159.5km/h against opener Nick Knight before finally bowling the 161.3km/h or 100.2 m/h delivery in the final ball of the over.

After the big screen showed that speed of the ball, Akhtar showed two fingers to his dressing room, probably hinting the fact that even though officially this was the first time he crossed the 100 m/h barrier, he had done it once before.

He did it once more, against the same opponents at Lord’s in a Test match in 2006.