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• Kurt Bayer: How I survived the world's fastest bowling
Greatbatch hunched over his bat, urging himself to get forward, despite every other instinct telling him the opposite. Eyes on stalks. Watch the ball, he mouths.
As Younis thundered towards him, a thin gold chain bouncing around his thick neck, Greatbatch was still, outwardly poised.
The ball was released late, almost immediately leaping at Greatbatch's throat. His head whipped back, jack-knifing like he'd been in a truck crash.
The ball whistled into the wicketkeeper's gloves. He had survived. Wicket, and life, intact. There was no thought of a scoring shot. Four more of the same followed.
"It was lightning quick and he wasn't even trying to get me out," Greatbatch recalls.
At the end of the over, he walked down to meet his batting partner, Trevor Franklin. "This is a fun place to be at the moment, isn't it Trevor?"
A few overs later, Younis bowled another experienced New Zealand batsman, Ken Rutherford, with an inswinging yorker that sent his leg-stump cartwheeling.
"I still haven't seen that ball to this day," said Rutherford, who scored 35 first-class centuries in a 17-year career.
"I barely raised my bat and the leg stump was gone, completely gone. As I walked off, with the leg stump further back than the wicketkeeper, Saleem Yousuf, I said to myself, 'Thank f*** for that'. The best place for me was the dressing room."
Express bowling holds a mystical place in top-level cricket, especially in the Test match arena, the players' pinnacle of the sport.
The names of pacemen past ring through history, even today sending shudders down the spines of long-retired batsmen: Harold Larwood, Frank "Typhoon" Tyson, Jeff Thomson (Thommo), "Whispering Death" Michael Holding, Shoaib Akhtar,"The Rawalpindi Express".
The stories are the stuff of legend. A batsman nicking Larwood only for the fielder to say he never caught it: "Yes, you f***ing-well did." Teammates taking bets on whether Thommo can bowl six byes. Umpire Fred Goodall not giving John Wright out, caught second slip to Thommo because he never actually saw it.
The generally-accepted definition of a fast bowler is one who bowls consistently at over 145 km/h.
Hard leather balls fired from 22 yards (20.12m). Or more precisely, 17.6m, when taking into account where the ball is finally delivered, to where the batsman is standing.
When the ball is travelling that quickly, the reaction time is less than half a second. Enough time to type a full stop.
A study conducted in the 1990s, published in Nature Neuroscience called 'From eye movements to actions: how batsmen hit the ball', concludes that batsmen facing fast bowlers do not keep their eye on the ball throughout its flight.
It knocks what every coach says for six: "Watch the ball".
None of the top-class batsmen in the study - including Allan Lamb and Wayne Larkin – could react to a sharp deviation in flight in less than 200 milliseconds.
Greg Chappell said on facing the famous fastest nastiest West Indian quartet of the 1970s: "At that speed, you are at the limit of your decision-making."
All top-flight batsmen talk about watching the ball. It sounds like something you tell children or beginners, but the focus is elevated.
They watch the bowler's hand as he runs in. The release point will give a split-second heads-up on where it might end up.
Top batsmen fixate on the ball as it is delivered, at the time of the bounce, and for a period up to about 200 milliseconds after the bounce.
Ex-Black Caps wicketkeeper Adam Parore remembers seeing the writing on a Kookaburra ball as it fizzed past his nostrils at 145km/h. It's like Keanu Reeves dodging bullets in The Matrix.
Mental skills coach Dave Hadfield, who has a degree in psychology and has worked with several major cricket associations, says batsmen have to overcome the brain's natural fight-or-flight response.
"Human beings are designed to stay, and when someone is bowling a cricket ball at you at that pace, it is bloody dangerous.
"The brain stem, the ancient survival part of your brain, is telling them to get the hell out of there, but batsmen have to overcome that," he says.
The split-second decisions batsmen have to make – go forward or back; play the ball or leave it; defend or attack - are subconscious or reactive decisions, Hadfield says.
Batsmen must focus on the ball and trust in their responses, honed from years training and playing the game.
"They have to have a clear mind, be totally focused on the ball as it leaves the bowler's hand, and then they have to trust that their response is the right one. If your mind is cloudy, or you're really fearful, then you're in trouble."
"It's remarkable that batsmen can do what they do. If you've got Brett Lee and [Mitchell] Starc coming at you, that fear factor… nobody enjoys that."
The highest officially recorded speed in a match is 161.3km/h by Pakistan's Akhtar in a One Day International against England at Newlands in the 2003 Cricket World Cup. It's closely followed by Australian speed merchants Shaun "Wild Thing" Tait and Brett Lee at 161.1km/h.
However, in the days before speed guns at cricket grounds, Thommo reckons he often bowled well in excess of 160km/h.
Most of those who were unfortunate enough to have faced him would agree, and so the title of Unofficial World's Fastest Ever Bowler rests with the yobbo Aussie with the slingshot action. YouTube footage needs replaying multiple times before you think you can see a ball.
New Zealand's own Shane Bond is up there too. In the 2003 Cricket World Cup where Akhtar was clocked, Bond recorded 156.4km/h against India as New Zealand tried to defend a paltry score of 146 runs.
"Some days it felt so easy and it all just clicked into express pace and that was really fun. Sometimes it would be a big crowd or a situation that, emotionally, made you really up for it, like that day," Bond says.
Bond grew up idolising fellow Christchurch-born cricketer Sir Richard Hadlee. Hadlee, who once held the record for most test wickets at 431, was a tearaway fast bowler in his early years before honing his action into a lethal combination of rhythm and swing.
Bond tried copying him, before melding five or six other actions into his own style.
"I'd always wanted to bowl quick," Bond said. "But it wasn't until [age] 26 when I was bowling proper fast [and made his Test debut] that I put an expectation on myself that I was going to bowl fast every day."
Bowling short-pitched deliveries aimed towards the batsman's head has always been part of the sport.
As well as being highly uncomfortable for the batsmen, and creating chances that they will glove a ball that will be caught, or hit a catch in the air, it also makes them move their weight backwards, and can mean they won't be in a position to defend a subsequent ball aimed at their stumps.
"No-one likes the ball at their head," says Shanan Stewart, who in his 13-year career played 244 games for Canterbury and four ODIs in 2010 against Australia and Bangladesh. "You talk to any batter, with anyone who is bowling serious heat, you are scared."
Bond agrees: "Nobody wants to face short-pitched bowling."
It's also effective at putting the fear of God into players waiting to bat, watching the action from the boundary.
"Those real quick guys often get wickets in bunches because any batsman sitting in the sheds is thinking, 'F***, he's bowling quick'," Stewart says.
"And it doesn't matter who you are, in those first 10 balls that you face, you are vulnerable to that raw pace. You don't have time to decide what shot you're going to play, it's all instinct, hence why they get wickets in clumps."
Former New Zealand test opener Mark Richardson faced Akhtar at his peak. In 2002, Ahktar had been clocked bowling over 160km/h on an unofficial recording device, which was not accepted by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
But for the first test against New Zealand in Lahore, the ICC installed an official measuring device, and an aggrieved Ahktar tried to prove himself the quickest in the world.
"It just got faster and faster until he'd cleaned all us lefties out," Richardson says.
"Afterwards, watching our video analysis, he bowled a full toss that I went to drive, but as I was playing my shot, the ball was landing between me and the wicketkeeper. I could see it but I just couldn't react fast enough. You could sort of get out of the way, you could flinch, but to actually play it was a different story altogether. It was above my level of expertise."
But was it scary?
"Definitely," says Richardson. "But you've got to overcome that. You're playing for your country, and you put your body on the line as much as you possibly can. But it is frightening.
"After that test, I went up to our security guy, an SAS fella, and asked him for advice on how to operate when you're frightened, because when he went to work, people would shoot at him. But as luck would have it the bomb went off in Karachi and we didn't have to face [Ahktar] again there."
Former test opener Peter Fulton has faced some of the quickest in recent history: Lee, Tait, Mitchell Johnson, Dale Steyn, and Lasith Malinga.
But the most "intense" spell of fast bowling he ever encountered was not under the spotlights and TV camera glare of international cricket, but in a club game in Christchurch.
Young seamer Richard Sherlock, a journeyman who ended up playing just 16 first-class matches for Central Districts, Canterbury and Auckland, was touted as "the next Shane Bond" in New Zealand cricket circles when Fulton faced him on a dodgy pitch with no sightscreens.
"He was bowling up around 145-150km/h and that was probably the most uncomfortable I've ever been in a game. At least if you play an international game you've got sight-screens, good viewing, and a good wicket, by and large, where you can trust the bounce. [Sherlock] might not be someone a lot of people remember but he had some serious pace."
With all the protection – fully-grilled helmets, pads, gloves, arm guard, abdominal protector, sometimes chest guards – Fulton said he was never scared. Uncomfortable, hyper-alert would be more apt, he says.
An analogy, Fulton says, would be the sensation after narrowly avoiding a motor accident while driving a car.
"You get that rush of adrenalin and your heart starts beating quicker," Fulton says.
"I remember being next in at the SCG [Sydney Cricket Ground] and Brett Lee was bowling about 155km/h. I looked down and noticed my palms were getting sweaty. I guess your body is trying to get you ready for it to make sure you are completely alert."
Richardson found balls from Lee relatively easy to pick up, courtesy of his classical action where batsmen got a good sight of the ball. Rutherford and Greatbatch said the same about South Africa's Allan Donald, nicknamed 'White Lightning'.
Being able to do anything about it was another thing, however, given its sheer velocity.
"I recall a game in Hobart," Richardson says, "and Lee was just bowling down the channel, quite wide.
"A couple went through and I thought, 'Next time he bowls one there, I could probably cut it'. Next ball, he bowled it right there, and it went through to the 'keeper. I'd forgotten to cut it. It was just too quick."
Bond remembers facing Lee bowling at 150km/h which gave him an idea of what it was like to face himself. After Lee bowled him, the frothing fast bowler pointed and shouted, "F*** off!"
"It was unpleasant. Bloody quick," Bond says. "You didn't have a lot of time."
Even with all the protection, evolution in helmet design, and laws designed to outlaw "intimidatory" bowling, players still get hurt, or worse.
New Zealand medium-fast bowler Ewen Chatfield, "The Naenae Express", swallowed his tongue and stopped breathing after being hit on the temple by English fast bowler Peter Lever during a test match at Eden Park in 1975.
The death of Australian batsman Phil Hughes after he was hit by a bouncer in a Sheffield Shield match in November 2014, rocked the cricket world.
Extra helmet protection was welcomed by some players and there was discussion about the place of short-pitched bowling the modern game.
Some appear to enjoy hurting their opponents. West Indian Colin Croft salivated around the wicket and once said he'd bounce his own granny.
Ex-Australian captain Michael Clarke was overheard on pitch microphones in the 2013 Ashes series, telling Englishman Jimmy Anderson about to face menacing left-armer Mitchell Johnson to, "Get ready for a broken f***ing arm."
Thomson claims he preferred to hurt batsmen rather than get them out. Others say they'd rather hit them, hurt them, and then get them out.
But Bond, a former police officer, never relished striking opponents.
"If I hit someone, especially in the head, I'd always go down and check on them. Their safety is always more important.
"You were never trying to hurt somebody, it was just a by-product of what was going on in the game. It really annoys me when someone gets hit and the bowler doesn't go and check on them."
Each purveyor of pace has a distinct, signature action. Thommo's soft toe-steps that launch his javelin-leap slingshot. Lee's leap, lock, and unload.
From the grass embankment, couch, or even the non-strikers end, there is a pure beauty, a graceful fluidity in truly rapid bowling.
Despite the Phil Hughes tragedy, the countless injuries, broken bones and night tremors, current and former top-level players are clear that pace and short-pitched bowling is integral to the sport.
"The only thing that stops you just planting your foot down the wicket and teeing off is the knowledge that you might get one at your head, and so it makes you a bit more cautious," Fulton says.
"If you took that out of the game, it wouldn't be the same game anymore."
