Name:

Thomson, Jeffrey R

Nickname:

Thommo, Two Up

Date of Birth:

16-08-1950

Place of Birth:

Greenacre, NSW

Career:

Test: 1972 - 1985
ODI: 1975 - 1985

Teams:

Australia (Country)
QLD (Regional)

Hitting batsman: The legend of Jeff Thomson

Jeff Thomson: The fastest bowler of all time

Jeffrey Robert Thomson was born 16 August 1950 in Greenacre, New South Wales.

Thomson was known as Two Up, a nickname that evolved from a favourite gambling haunt in Sydney, Thommo's Two Up School.

He was one of the fastest bowlers ever to play Test cricket and was the opening partner of fellow fast bowler Dennis Lillee; their combination was one of the most fearsome in Test cricket history. Commenting of their bowling during the 1974–75 season, Wisden wrote: "... it was easy to believe they were the fastest pair ever to have coincided in a cricket team".

Competing in a 1978 fast bowling contest that included many of the leading bowlers in the world, Thomson came first with a delivery clocked at 147.9 km/h, ahead of Michael Holding (141.3 km/h) and Imran Khan (139.7 km/h). In 1975 during a test match, he was timed using high-speed cameras with a release speed of 160.45 km/h; the following year he was timed at 160.58 km/h using conventional radar. Australian wicket-keeper Rod Marsh kept wicket to Thomson for most of his Test career and claimed that Thomson bowled upwards of 180 km/h. Former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd regards Thomson as the fastest bowler he has ever seen.

Thomson himself noted that he had been timed at the batsman's end of the pitch (by which time the ball has slowed) and believes had he been timed out of the hand he would have been closer to 180 km/h.
Incidents of Thomson's deliveries hitting the opposite sight-screen (behind the wicket-keeper), beating the wicket-keeper on the full, after the one bounce on the pitch were reported, when he was at his fastest between 1972 and 1976, long before boundary ropes were getting pulled in from around 1990.

Thomson came to the fore in 1974–75 with 33 wickets in the Ashes series. Modern protective items for batsmen, specifically helmets, were not available at the time, and there was no restrictions on the use of the bouncer. The success of the Australian cricket team with fast bowling prompted an era when pace bowling dominated the game, at the expense of slow bowling.