Cricket: Stars reveal the scariest fast bowling spells they ever faced

From Mark Waugh and Allan Border to Shane Watson and Mike Hussey, our batting stars have revealed the scariest pace spells they ever had to face.

1976. West Indies bowler Michael Holding at Lords. Cricket. Picture: CENTRAL PRESS PHOTOS.

All sportsmen thrive on the challenge. And for batsmen in cricket there is none so great as staring down truly venomous fast bowling.

Standing up to someone with raw pace who is jamming deliveries up into the ribs would surely have any alpha male batsman licking their lips in anticipation?

Watch every ODI, T20 & Test Match of India’s tour of Australia LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your free trial now & start streaming instantly >

“Yeah, bullshit,” says iconic Australia Test captain Allan Border, the toughest to ever stride to the crease in that arena.

“I played against the West Indies a fair bit. And anyone who says they love the challenge against raw pace and really enjoys playing fast bowling … they’re lying.”

Australia has produced some of the most terrifying fast bowlers of the past half century – from Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson to Brett Lee and, more recently, Mitchell Johnson and Shaun Tait – but their batsmen have also had to endure and survive some of the scariest spells known to man.

In their own words, here’s a selection of the most wild and stomach-churning experiences against express pace at all levels of the game in this country.

Allan Border faced up to the might of the Windies for 15 years.

ALLAN BORDER

Regarded as the hardest man to don the baggy green, Border, for 15 years, faced up to dangerous West Indian pace battalions that included the likes of Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner, Andy Roberts.

Marshall might be regarded as the best, but none were faster than Holding – which Border experienced first hand in a one-day game in Perth, a memory which still gives him chills.

With an unusual early start time of 10am, Australia batted first on a WACA wicket that had a white sheen to it. With the low sun reflecting off the pitch, visibility was an issue. But so was Holding.

“Michael Holding, world’s nicest bloke, but he had a bit of the grumps on this morning,” Border said.

“When I came in he already had two wickets and we didn’t have many runs.

“It’s the fastest bowling I’ve faced and certainly the scariest. It was a white ball, so very hard to pick up off the surface and I just remember thinking ‘if he gets it on line and in the right spot, I won’t be able to get out of the way’. It just became about self-preservation.

“It is the one time as a batsman I thought I was in serious trouble of getting cleaned up. I wasn’t even thinking about scoring runs, I was just thinking about getting out of the road. My heart was racing.”

Jeff Thomson was lightning quick.

KIM HUGHES

Those who saw him say no one – ever – bowled as fast as Jeff Thomson.

Future Test captain Kim Hughes first laid eyes on Thommo in his second game of Shield cricket and approached the crease with the cocksure attitude of a young gun who’d peeled off a century in his first-class debut the week before.

He got the fright of his life when, after scratching out his mark, he turned around and saw the wicketkeeper John MacLean standing almost all the way back to the sightscreen.

“I thought he wasn’t ready – so being a nice young man, I called for him to come up,” Hughes recalled.

But MacLean knew what he was doing: Thomson’s bouncers had a reputation for hitting the sightscreen on the full.

“I met Bruce Laird out in the middle of the ground, and he said ‘good luck’,” Hughes added.

“I was that cocky that I said I didn’t really need it. But he said ‘mate, some bastard is going to get killed here today’ and I thought ‘well, hopefully it’s not me’.

“I’d faced Dennis Lillee in the WACA nets since I was 16, but this was something else. I faced Marshall, Holding, Lillee… but Thommo was the quickest by a long way.”

Matthew Hayden is bowled by Curtly Ambrose in 1996.

Ambrose celebrates the wicket of Hayden in Perth in 1997.

MATTHEW HAYDEN

Picture this: A second-innings WACA wicket showing wear and tear to the point where cracks so big you could stuff a cricket bat halfway down them are opening up on a good length. And Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh steaming in off the long run.

It’s the stuff of nightmares.

“That was terrifying. Greg Blewett got done on one which hit a crack and it went underneath the bat. It was just so unpredictable,” Hayden says.

“We were just trying to hold on. In my thinking I had one ball out of every 50 that might hit the crack.

“But Courtney Walsh’s first ball hits the crack and it goes for four wides down the legside. Second ball hits the same crack and goes the other way, to second slip.

“I just thought ‘forget it, I’m just swinging like a rusty gate here’ and I ended up scoring a 50, but it was a disgraceful innings with a lack of courage.”

Brett Lee proved more than a handful for Mike Hussey.

MIKE HUSSEY

The most rapid of Australia’s modern generation was undoubtedly Brett Lee – who duelled with Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar for the title of fastest man on the planet for the best part of a decade.

With an action as pure as silk, Lee at his best sent down unplayable 160km rockets. And Mike Hussey saw the best of that in a WACA Shield match just before the young gun’s first Test call-up.

“He was always quick. But this was the perfect storm,” Hussey said.

He’d been through a lot of injuries as a kid, got himself fit and got a lot of bowling under his belt, and was obviously really hungry – and still at that age where he could really just let it rip and bowl as fast as he could.”

“NSW were trying to win the Shield game on the last day and he had Steve Waugh, the Aussie captain, in the team as well. So I think he was trying to impress him. I didn’t last long.

“The best way to try and explain facing fast bowling is it is a bit like a timewarp – you see the ball come out of the hand and you miss a little bit and it’s suddenly flying past your eyebrows. You just don’t have time to think. You’re just seeing and reacting, playing it on pure instinct.”

IAN HEALY

Chasing a target of 247 at the SCG, and having survived until stumps as a nightwatchman the night before, Ian Healy had a look at a docile SCG wicket and thought this was his chance to deliver a famous Australian victory.

But Pakistan icon Wasim Akram had other ideas.

“First ball, outswinger, I played and missed. Then inswinger, I got hit in the body. Then I ducked one which whizzed past my grille and then fourth ball I nicked the faintest of edges,” Healy recalls.

“It was the best bowling I’ve ever faced. He turned a day of optimism and me filling my boots to nothing in the space of four minutes.

“Jason Gillespie bowled the fastest spell I ever kept to – the day he got 7-37. He was bowling down breeze, downhill a little bit and they were flying through to us behind the stumps.”

Devon Malcolm was a fearsome sight at his best.

BRAD HODGE

Shaun Tait gave Brad Hodge more than a couple of sleepless nights, but the one bowler that really sticks in the memory comes from when the Victorian played a tour game against England at Queen Elizabeth Oval in Bendigo under overcast skies.

“One of those days when visibility wasn’t great. I’m colour blind, too, and the trees at the back were well and truly above the sightscreen and Devon Malcolm was absolutely steaming in on this day,” Hodge said.

“I remember being absolutely fearful for my life. I nicked the ball to Graham Thorpe at second slip, and they were back on the 30m circle, it hit him in the chest, bounced up and Mike Atherton took it at first slip – and it’s the only time in the history of cricket I’ve been happy to walk off after getting out.

“I’ve always said it’s between (Malcolm), Shoaib Akhtar, Brett Lee and Shaun Tait as the quickest I’ve faced. But that was the scariest, because I was physically struggling to see the ball.”

SHANE WATSON

One of the more memorable moments of the 2015 World Cup involved the showdown between Watson and Pakistan tearaway Wahab Riaz, who peppered the two-time Allan Border medal winner with short balls in a brutal spell.

But it’s not the scariest bowling Watson has faced.

“At that moment in time it was fast and super accurate. He didn’t burn any of his bouncers,” says of the Riaz experience.

Shane Watson rates Andrew Flintoff as among the quickest he has faced.

“But the first time I played Freddy Flintoff in a Test match opening the batting at Edgbaston… that was amazing to be able to face him.

“It was incredibly challenging. How it’s angled, it was coming at you all the time.”

MACKENZIE HARVEY

No one who was there will ever forget the vicious spell of fast bowling from England firebrand Jofra Archer when he felled the previously unflappable Steve Smith at Lord’s – first with a blow to the arm, and later a sickening strike to the head that left the star batsman concussed.

And few could imagine what it would be like to stand 22 yards from the ruthless quick. But young Victorian star Mackenzie Harvey knows, having done battle with Archer in the Big Bash.

“(It was) consecutive overs from Jofra Archer and Riley Meredith,” says the Melbourne Renegades all-rounder.

“Both were bowling 140kmh+ consistently and not a lot were in my half of the wicket.

“I wasn’t able to hang around for long but that was easily one of the quickest and most fearsome couple of overs I’ve had to face.”

MARK WAUGH

The 1990s had some of the best firepower in history when it came to fast bowling – with the likes of Curtly Ambrose and South African great Allan Donald terrorising lineups – and while ‘White Lightning’ got the blood pumping, no one put the fear of god into Waugh quite like a little-known grade cricketer did when he was just 17 years old.

Mark Waugh said Graeme Pitty was ‘pretty scary’.

The future Test star wasn’t even old enough to drink when he was deployed at No.3 in the Sydney grade cricket final for Bankstown, where he padded up to face the left-arm pace of Penrith’s Graeme Pitty.

“At the time it was the fastest bowling I’d ever seen – it was obviously not the quickest I ever faced, but at the time it felt like it. Pretty scary,” Waugh said.

“I’d barely played a handful of first grade games and had come straight from schoolboys. So playing in a first grade final I just thought ‘wow, that’s fast’.”

STEVE O’KEEFE

Peter Siddle took 221 wickets in a fine Test career – and he’s still doing the business for Tasmania – but he’s never had a reputation for being truly rapid. He was once dropped by then-coach Darren Lehmann for lacking the extra yard of pace that unsettled batsmen.

But try telling that to Sydney Sixers veteran Steve O’Keefe, who explains what life is like as a lower order batsman coming up against a fast bowler with a bee in his bonnet – particularly one with a second new ball in the shadows of stumps.

“Bob Quiney was at bat pad and he was getting awfully annoyed because he thought I was going to stand on top of him while I tried to get out of the way of Siddle’s thunderbolts,” O’Keefe said.

Peter Siddle was pretty intimidating, especially at the start of his career.

The former Test spinner also gave an insight into what it’s like to be Mitchell Starc’s teammate – and having to face him in the nets.

“When he has a new ball and is steaming in there is nowhere to hide. A broken toe, hip or grill is a real possibility!”

NICK LARKIN

Like Waugh, NSW opener Nick Larkin’s memory comes from his early years in first-grade cricket.

“I was 20 years old playing in a first-grade semi-final against Bankstown. Danny McLauchlan bowled left arm thunderbolts and let you know his plan was to take your head off. He barely pitched one the batters half all match!”

CRICKET LATEST

Australia gives youth its chance in Test series

100m reasons why Kohli bombshell changes summer

Be afraid: How India’s quicks are built to take down Aussies

Originally published as Cricket: Stars reveal the scariest fast bowling spells they ever faced