Jeff Thompson: The Gunslinger from Down Under
If fast bowling was an art, Jeff Thompson was it's unprecedented, downright and egregious mercenary. The man, the myth, the legend.
The word ‘ruthless’ as defined by American Heritage Dictionary of The English Language is ‘having no compassion or pity; merciless’. Wondering how someone can possibly relate the ‘gentleman’s game’ to ‘ruthless’ or ‘aggression’? Well, let’s get started with some appetisers.
“When I go out to bowl I want a hangover from hell. I bowl really well when I've got a headache”
Got any raised eyebrow yet? No? Let's go for one more.
“I enjoy hitting a batsman more than getting him out. I like to see blood on the pitch.”
That’s a quote from a cricketer, not a bloodthirsty grave digger. Some might already be shuffling up some names in their heads so let’s cut to the chase here. The man in the discussion is none other than the great Jeffrey Robert Thompson. Nicknamed ‘Thommo’, the bloke from Greenacre, New South Wales is hands down considered by most as the fastest bowler to have ever delivered a ball in the international arena.
Together with his opening bowling partner Dennis Lillee, another legend himself, Thommo ripped through batting line-ups, abrading them both physically and mentally in what seemed like an unmatched battle between bat and ball. Delineating on their bowling during the 1974–75 season, Wisden magazine wrote: “It was easy to believe they were the fastest pair ever to have coincided in a cricket team”.
Across a Test career that spanned 13 years, the demonic exponent of raw pace and hostility took 200 wickets in 51 tests. But that is just a statistical portrait to be admonished in books. Ask the batsmen he demolished, they’ll all voice a basic theme of how he set hell loose upon them.
Thompson was an antithesis to the ‘morning shows the day’ ideology. He had a very frail debut which made the fact that he would go on to become almost every batter’s nemesis, a hard pill to swallow. It would take him two more years to play his next test match after his horrific debut in which he returned with figures of 0/110.
It was the summer of The Ashes, 1974-75. The England team had just arrived on Australian shores on the back of a drawn test series against the West Indies. Australia had more than a decent bowling cartel. Their most feared bowler – Dennis Lillee was on a comeback trail from a career threatening injury. There was much speculation as to who would complement Lillee as the other half of the opening pair. One name popped up quite so often in the Aussie media – Jeff Thompson.
Back in the day when satellite television and internet weren’t much of a thing, newbies were more of a surprise package. Unlike today where the players get the amenities of watching and scrutinising almost every possible threat the opposition players had to offer, players could come up from absolutely nowhere back then.
Thommo was capricious but fast compounded with a unique slinging action. He looked more like a typical Aussie bloke who loved chilling on a surfboard rather than playing cricket. The tourists, skippered by Mike Denness, got a chance to see him first hand when they played Queensland in a tour game. For a couple of overs he was sharp, but then he cut back. So naturally, nobody from the England camp had the slightest anticipation that this man would feature in the XI for the first Test, let alone rip them apart.
What they didn’t know was that the then Aussie skipper Greg Chappel, before the game, ordered Jeff to ‘f*** around and not show the poms what he was capable of’. Many would deem such tactic as derogatory to the spirit of the game but this was just a testament to the lengths the Ashes rivals were willing to go back then.
As per orders, Thompson just toyed around with the batsmen until being unleashed as a Pandora’s box which the Englishmen opened quite happily, only to be met with literal bolts from the blue. He finished with 9/105 in a match where he almost single-handedly brought the Poms down to their knees.
If Thommo’s bowling acumen has you jumping over your seats, wait till you hear about the other side of his bowling – the side that gave nightmares in broad daylight to almost any batsmen donned with the infelicity of facing him. Ask former Sri Lankan batsman Sunil Wettimuny. Wettimuny’s ‘adventure’ with Thommo took place in a World Cup match at The Oval on June 11, 1975.
Sri Lankans were 328 for 5 at some point when the inevitable happened. “We had never seen such pace and with the way Thommo seemed to hide the ball behind his back, you couldn't pick it at all," Wettimuny wailed. In his opening spell, Thomson hit Wettimuny twice in the medial thigh, followed it up with a belter on the hip bone and a topped it off with a hit to the thoracic cage.
However, the match was slipping out of Australia’s hands as Duleep Mendis, who was batting confidently on 32* had steadied the ship and was about to sail the Lankans to a safe shore. But little did he know what the Aussie skipper was cooking as he looked to thwart the Lankan hero.
Poor Mendis played a couple of Thommo’s deliveries, after which the paceman started firing on all cylinders. As the ball snorted from a good length like a spitting cobra, Mendis tried valiantly to fend it off but the ball hit him right on the frontal bone of his forehead. He staggered and fell heavily on the pitch. Face down, eyes closed.
A moment of pin-drop silence grasped the stadium and just when the cloud of thick air seemed like taking over, Mendis turned over onto his back and looked up. His eyes were open with tears streaming down his face as he went through the agonising pain.
Wettimuny, already nursing his bruised ribs looked on from the other end as his partner was forced to be carried out on a stretcher. In came the new batsman Anura Tennekoon making his way to the crease ever so slowly.
Few overs later, Wettimuny had to face Thompson again. This time he hit Sunil acrimoniously on the instep as he hopped about in agony.
Anyone with a hint of sanity in their mind would picture the next scene with the bowler with his teammates flocking over to the spot to check on the wounded bloke. But not with Thompson. Instead, he tried to run him out! Would you believe that?! If that wasn’t bad enough, Thommo followed it up with a sledge,
After a lengthy delay Wettimuny bravely stood up to face the next ball. It was an identical toe crusher that steamed into Sunil’s right instep, the exact same spot that he almost took out moments ago. This time Sunil had just lost it. Enough was enough as he broke down in agony and had to be carried off the ground on a stretcher to join Mendis at a nearby St Thomas’ Hospital.
Till to date Wettimuny never forgot that day. Neither does it look like he ever will to be honest. “Never before or since, did I know fear on a cricket field. When I got to the hospital I discovered I had sustained a hairline fracture of the rib, my right foot was broken, I had a dreadful bruise on my inner thigh, my hip bone was badly bruised and I was completely numb in my left leg. I thought I was paralysed. The numbness stayed with me for 12 hours. Later on, I remember Sri Lankan players telling me of the great pace of Imran Khan. Sure Imran was a speed merchant, but compared to Thommo, Imran came at you at a gentle medium pace.”
Thommo’s diabolical pace left permanent marks on many. Almost every cricketer who was ‘unlucky’ enough to face him came into an unequivocal admission that he was the fastest man in the business, if not the fastest of all time. 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. Ian Chappell and Ashley Mallett have also opined the same.
To ice the perfect ending to the story of this great man, a quote from John Michael Brearley, Essex first class cricketer come to mind – “Broken marriages, conflicts of loyalty, the problems of everyday life fall away as one faces up to Thomson."