Jeff Thomson

Widely considered to be the fastest bowler to play the game, Jeff Thomson terrorised batsmen in the 70s and 80s when he took 200 wickets in 51 Tests. Only a handful of Australian cricketers had taken 200 Test wickets and Jeff did it at a strike rate of almost four wickets a Test.

Jeff was most famous for his pace and outright aggression, and it was these qualities that people came to see when he played. His bowling speed of 160.6 km/h against the West Indies in Perth in 1975, was the fastest recorded delivery at the time, and the fourth-fastest recorded delivery of all time. One news reporter writing “Dump a cricket ball in kerosene, light it on fire and launch it out of a cannon and then you’ll get something like Jeff Thomson.

He was inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2016.