The quick and the dread: the art of terrorising batsmen down the ages shows that speed thrills

GRANTLEE Kieza takes a look at the some of the bowlers down the years who have terrorised batsmen.

Mitchell Johnson unleashes a thunderbolt during his demolition of England's batting order.

THE little Englishman had started his working life leading a pit pony down a colliery on the outskirts of Nottingham. Now he was old and frail, stooped over under the weight of his 90 years and long retired from his last job driving a delivery truck for Pepsi around the streets of Sydney.

His eyesight was gone and the thick glasses that framed his creased face were only cosmetic, as he had been legally blind for years.

The old man needed a guiding hand to find the pen and title page when he signed a book for me from memory. But in a firm hand he wrote his name: Harold Larwood. The two words still reverberate around the cricketing world as synonyms for terror.

Larwood was the man who cut Don Bradman down to size, cracked the skull of Bert Oldfield and wreaked havoc during one firestorm tour of Australia in 1932-33, bowling at 150km/h to batsmen who had no helmets and only rudimentary protective equipment.

News_Rich_Media: Mitchell Johnson has backed the actions of Michael Clarke, saying "you want your captain to stand up for your players."

Mitchell Johnson bowled with the same sort of pace and venom at the Gabba on the weekend as Australia returned fire against England in the First Test, proving yet again the maxim Larwood always espoused: that fast men put the dynamite into cricket.

Some of cricket's most dramatic moments have centred on the struggle between batsmen and tearaway quicks.

Who can forget Rick McCosker, his broken jaw swathed in bandages, coming out to defy the thunderbolts of Bob Willis in the Centenary Test or Stan McCabe refusing to buckle against Larwood's blasts?

Frank Tyson still talks about Neil Harvey standing up to his fastest deliveries 60 years ago and Queensland's Keith "Slasher'' McKay wrote himself into history by taking Wes Hall's deadly deliveries on his battered body rather than surrendering his wicket.

To that long list of dramatic entertainments we can now add Michael Clarke threatening to send an Englishman  home with a broken arm courtesy of the Aussie pacemen.

Speed thrills.

News_Image_File: Harold Larwood in action during the Bodyline Ashes Test series of 1932-33.

Larwood knew the legends surrounding the fabled George Brown of Brighton, a Sussex opener who cut loose in the days when bowling underarm was the norm rather than a scandal.

In the 1820s, Brown was said to be so fast that longstops only felt safe with a sack of straw tied to their chests.

Larwood's eyesight stayed with him long enough to see Jeff Thomson clocked at 160km/h, though teammates such as Tony Dell reckon he must have hit 170 when the fire was really stoked.

Fast bowlers have always been a volatile mix of cunning and fury, from "The Demon'' Fred Spofforth, Australia's spearhead of the 1880s, to the absolutely flab-ulous Mervyn Hughes, a cult hero a century later for his waistline and wicked pace.

Merv's spiritual ancestor was another big brawny Australian opener named Ernie Jones. "Jonah'' once sent a ball whizzing through the beard of the regal English skipper W.G. Grace and cracked the ribs of his dashing batting partner Stanley Jackson.

Before the 1928-29 England tour of Australia, Jonah, having retired from Test cricket 30 years earlier, rowed out to meet the ship carrying the Poms to Fremantle and, with a megaphone cupped to his mouth, greeted them with "100-1 England for the Tests'' and "You haven't got a chance''.

News_Image_File: Jeff Thomson is widely regarded as one of the quickest bowlers in cricket history.

Jeff Thomson terrorised opposition batsmen, usually in tandem with Dennis Lillee and the former England captain Colin Cowdrey once told me that even though they formed a terrifying combination … "part of the great joy and excitement of cricket for a batsman is the duel against the fast men''.

Brett Lee recalled with unbridled delight the time he broke the jaw of an opposing batsman with a bouncer and before his back betrayed him, Mark Waugh was just as proud of hitting batsmen in the head with the short stuff as he was of hitting quickfire hundreds.

Some of the fast men took their hostility too far, though.

Roy Gilchrist, one of the fastest bowlers ever to play for the West Indies, had a history of violence and after his career was ruined by bowling beamers from halfway down the wicket, he eventually went to jail for pulling a knife on a spectator in Manchester.

News_Image_File: Dennis Lillee (left) with Sir Donald Bradman and Harold Larwood.

Gilchrist made his Test debut in 1957, two years after the death of a predecessor in the West Indian team, Leslie Hylton.

Part of the Windies' first great pace quartet, Hylton died at the end of a hangman's rope in Jamaica for killing his wife.

He said they'd be grappling over a six-shooter when it went off.

Mrs Hylton had been shot seven times.