Akhtar said he had warned Nick Knight before bowling an over to him.
Former Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar recalled the hard work behind his target to touch the 100 miles per hour mark. He had to train very hard to become quickest of all and Akhtar spoke about it in BBC's Doosra podcast.
Akhtar said he started training harder for the landmark after the media hyped it up. The speedster also added how he had warned England batsman Nick Knight before bowling an over to him in the 2003 World Cup.
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"Breaking the 100mph barrier wasn't a big deal to me. It was just media hype, an international cricket gimmick. I wasn't getting paid for this - to break my bones trying to bowl that fast," he said.
"I just thought, 'for heaven's sake, I need to finish this and just do it.' So I planned it all out, I started training for it.
"I ran with 170kg weights on my back, taking 20kg off after every 100-meter sprint. I also used to bowl from 26 yards with something much heavier than a cricket ball. When I came back to the 22 yards, I was about 6km/h (3.7mph) quicker.
"I planned to bowl it against Nick Knight. I said to him, 'I'm going to hurt you, so make sure you stay out of the way.' I told him I'd bowl 100mph in that over, on that exact ball."
Akhtar feels the current set of players doesn't have the courage to see opposition into the eyes and challenge them. He shared his own stories from playing days for an example.
"There are no characters left in the game. Apart from Ben Stokes, where are they? The ones who are up for the fight? Me and Australia's Matthew Hayden once got into a fight at breakfast - we were wanting to hurt each other. Then when we got into the ground there was a verbal war. He's twice the size of me but I told him size doesn't matter in the fight.
"What we did with each other was very bad but the crowd loved it, I loved it, he took me on. I said to him, 'you're not a better-looking cricketer than me, you're very ugly so I want to get you out and get rid of you so I don't see your face.'
"Once, in the ICC Super Series, I was injured and I told Freddie Flintoff I was not fit. He said, 'you were born unfit' and 'you look like a Tarzan but you bowl like Jane'.
"So when he was next touring Pakistan, the verbal wars started with Flintoff. I told him he had woken me up by what he said to me back in Australia. In that series, I bowled the fastest ever. My last spell was faster than the first one. Freddie was badly hurt, he had no answers, I got him out a few times in that series.
"But these are the types of characters that need to re-emerge in the game."