Twitter reacts to Matheesha ‘Malinga’ Pathirana clocking 175 kph on speed gun

SportsCafe Desk

BySportsCafe Desk, SportsCafe Editor

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Can you imagine being 17 years of age and clocking 175 kph on the speed gun? Well, Sri Lanka’s Matheesha Pathirana, whose action has a striking resemblance to that of Lasith Malinga, managed to achieve the feat against the Indian U19 team at the Mangaung Oval in Bloemfontein on Sunday.

Prior to the tournament, there was certainly hype surrounding Matheesha Pathirana, the Lankan youngster whose bowling action was all but the carbon copy of Lasith Malinga. In fact, he’s the second such Malinga prototype that we the fans have come across in recent times, with Tamil Nadu’s G Periyaswamy being the first. Anyway, coming back to Pathirana, the expectations on the youngster was high, ahead of the tournament, but no one quite expected him to do what he did on Sunday.

On the final ball of the fourth over, bowling to India’s star batsman Yashasvi Jaiswal, the slingy right-armer, who was in the middle of an extremely quick spell, delivered a wayward, erratic bouncer towards the left of Jaiswal, which the batsman let go. The ball was, in fact, so wide that the left-hander didn’t even need to attempt playing a shot. The umpire called the ball wide and rightly so, but that was not the catch of the incident.

The speed guns showed that the bowler had clocked an astonishing 175 kph (108 mph), leaving every single viewer bewildered. In case you’re wondering, the fastest ball ever recorded was bowled by Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar, back in 2002, when the tearaway quick recorded a speed of 161.3km/h (100.2mph) on the clock. This was almost fourteen kph quicker than Shoaib’s rocket. 

Of course, it might very well have been a glitch, with the speed gun just misfiring, especially with Pathirana not coming anywhere close to the 100mph mark apart from that. But it did get people talking and raised a few eyebrows. And one thing’s for sure, there will be people keeping an eye on this youngster everytime he comes to bowl.

Here are the tweets: This was the delivery! 

It did raise some eyebrows!

As of now, it is a world record! 

Debatable! 

Doing it at the age of 17! :O

I had to pinch myself! 

The speed gun error maybe?

The debate becomes heated! 

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