Former Pakistani speed gun, Shoaib Akhtar offered a piece of advice to Mark Wood in order to break his 100 mph record.
Former Pakistani pacer, Shoaib Akhtar holds the record for bowling the fastest delivery in the history of world cricket. Akhtar bowled a delivery at the speed of 161 kmph (100 mph). Nobody in the last 20 years has come close to his record.
In a recent interview with Michael Vaughan, Shoaib Akhtar spoke about what he went through to achieve that feat. Moreover, he shared that in this generation, Mark Wood is the bowler he is highly impressed with and offered a piece of advice to the pacer.
“Mark Wood is a great-looking guy with beautiful action,” Shoaib Akhtar
Shoaib Akhtar feels that Mark Wood is the one who can bowl at a pace of more than 155 kmph. But for that, he needs to follow a different training regime. Further, he shared what training he went through to achieve those muscles and body.
“Mark Wood, a great-looking guy and a lovely human being with a beautiful action, that’s what I like to see!”
“A couple of things I have noticed. He loses his follow through. Thank god he shortened his run up. He lands on the left foot, and you see often he collapses on the pitch because he cannot control the follow through,”
Furthermore, Shoaib Akhtar said that Mark Wood needs to pull trucks to build strong muscles. Akhtar shared that he did many rigorous pieces of training and focused on developing muscles. And in that process, he was damaging his knees and other parts of his body.
“If he is thinking that he cannot bowl more than 155, he is absolutely wrong there! If he wants to bowl 100mph, he needs to start pulling trucks. I made the pitches about 26 yards and made a ball about four times heavier than normal. I trained by doing a lot of weights, riding the bicycle with weights on it and would do about 1000 reps”
“noticed I developed muscles that I had never been able to touch before. Little did I know that I was losing my knees, bones and cartilage at the same time. Whoever can bowl 150kph has 10ks in reserve, with the right preparation and the right recuperation,”
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