Published By: Saksham Mishra

TaylaVlaeminck: Fastest bowler in women's cricket

South Africa's Shabnim Ismail and New Zealand's Lea Tahuhu are other bowlers in women's cricket who bowl at rapid pace. Shabnim Ismail hit 128 km per hour in 2016 while Lea Tahuhu was recorded at 126 km per hour. In the yesteryear, bowlers like Kathryn Fitzpatrick and Sharon Tredrea used to bowl some serious gas.

In recent years, Ellyse Perry has hit 120 kph on a number of occasions. TaylaVlaeminck is currently the fastest bowler in world cricket and bowls at over 120 kph on a regular basis.

Australia were pumped for her to be part of the 2020 T20 World Cup but she suffered a foot injury and was ruled out of the tournament. TaylaVlaeminck made a comeback in the T20I series against India and came good.

She sprayed it a little bit in the 1st T20I and was taken to the cleaners by Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana. However, Vlaeminck had excellent returns in the remaining two matches. In the 2nd T20I, she picked up two wickets while conceding 18 runs. TaylaVlaeminck gave away 18 runs in the third T20 as well without picking up a wicket.

Vlaeminck generally bowls 3 overs first up in the powerplay when batters are looking to go hard and it is obviously not that simple to attack such rapid pace. More often than not, it leads to the batter's downfall.

In the first match of the T20I series against India, the broadcasters erroneously showed TaylaVlaeminck to be bowling at 145 kph.

"No (laughs) I'll take that! There is no error in that whatsoever," she quipped. When asked whether she was aware of the speed gun, she said, "No I didn't actually know that. If I had looked up, I would've had a little smile, I think. But no, I think the broadcast might've pumped that up a little bit."

"I think the last couple of sessions in the nets I started to get some of my rhythm back and it felt good out here tonight. Obviously, there was a lot happening. And you kind of just get caught up in the moment a little bit, so I wasn't really thinking too much about it but they felt like they were coming out well, and hopefully, I can continue that throughout the series," Vlaeminck said after the match.

The blip garnered a lot of headlines around the world. While that is stretching the imagination a bit too much, the Australian quick certainly has the rare ability of rushing batters.