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Fastest ball ever in cricket?

The speed gun at the Newlands ground in South Africa recorded Shoaib Akhtar as having bowled the fastest ball ever hurled across 22 yards of a cricket pitch in the Pakistan-England World Cup match on February 22: at 161.3 kilometres per hour of blistering pace, or just over 100 mph.

Faster than Jeff Thomson. Faster than Brett Lee.

The moment the speed gun showed the reading during Akhtar's second over, 'The Rawalpindi Express,' one of contemporary cricket's real characters, lost no time in making all the appropriate signs to the spectators and the dressing room.

The Pakistan party's media minders were quick to spread the word about how an Asian had achieved the 100-mile mark that had eluded white folk. And that he had chosen the biggest cricket stage in the world to do so.

Text: Faisal Shariff

Shoaib's bullet
Complete coverage: The World Cup


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