Shaun Tait’s bowling speed

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Insert shit joke about 'firepower' hereShaun Tait is unquestionably a fast bowler – probably the fastest around at the moment. You can tell because batsmen regularly ‘make room’ to play him – they’re getting their bodies out of the way, not freeing their arms.

A Shaun Tait delivery was clocked at 100mph at Lord’s in a one-day match against England. Did anyone catch what the other bowlers were bowling so that we know how seriously to take this measurement?

On Cricinfo’s Hawkeye tool, Tait’s fastest delivery for that match is recorded as being 97mph. Being as James Anderson’s is down as 95.4mph, we can probably knock that down to about 92mph, but how reliable are Cricinfo’s measurements? How reliable are one-day speed guns?

Shaun Tait clean-bowled three of England’s top four batsmen. That’s as good a measurement as any.

9 comments

  1. Am just grateful that Aus deem DIrty Dirk Nannes just a T20 bowler – he and Tait on song with the Rug steaming in as well would be frightful.

  2. I think one of the management actually injured Hauritz when they came to the full realisation that they were stuck with Clint McKay for the series unless someone got very injured, very fast. And Hauritz is littler than McKay.

  3. Cricket is much better with Shaun Tait in it. Unfortunately, the Australians think (probably correctly) that Tait would be rubbish in a test match (he couldn’t maintain his pace beyond three overs in this match), so they won’t pick him in the Ashes. This is missing the point. If you have five bowlers, you can afford one of them to be a three-over impact bowler. So he goes at six an over in his first spell. And his second. And eight an over in his fifth spell. So what? He’ll more than make up for it with his 3 2 4 2 sixth spell. Stumps everywhere. Even as an England fan, you’d be hard pressed not to secretly enjoy that.

  4. Wasn’t one of the top three Yardy for some reason? I only saw the scorecard for the match so don’t really know much about it apart from KP being pushed down the order.

    And I can only presume that Tait got Swann with a 90mph slower ball later on. It’s not like he’d be slow in his later spells in a test match. He’d still be quicker than anything we’ve got. I bet he could wipe through the lower order with that toe crunching yorker he possesses aswell.

  5. It’s only a matter of time before a one-day speedgun clocks Paul Collingwood at 90mph.

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