Batsmen always look to get on top of the bowlers, be it in limited overs match or the game’s evergreen longest format. Some shots are played to accelerate the run rate while some are attributed to batsmen experiencing a rush of blood or brain-fade.
The cover drive is a copybook stroke make famous by the greats that have played the game through the ages. It is one of the first stroke taught to kids and professionals love holding the posture for the shutterbugs. That said, the stroke looks good only when executed to attain the desired results. One wrong step or a flawed swing of the bat could be catastrophic.
Here are five lesser known complexities behind cricket’s most beloved stroke.
#1 Detrimental to the quest to come back to form
For a batsman, it takes one match to lose touch and will have to painfully need to hustle through the hard grind to get back into the thick of things.
The cover drive is perilously venomous and shouldn’t be an option for batsmen who are in poor form. Bowlers tend to float the ball in and around the off stump and wait for the batsman to hang the bat out. Nevertheless, it’s the batsman’s patience which is put through a tough examination. It’s also a time when the batsman’s feet aren’t mobile and attempting a cover-drive will dent the mindset of the batsman more often or not.
The cover drive presents itself with technical difficulties and there have been instances when accomplished batsmen have kept the stroke away.
Sachin Tendulkar, in the 2003-04 Test tour to Australia, was going through a lean patch and often perished to deliveries outside the off-stump, edging them to the men standing behind.
In the final test match in Sydney, he cut off his off-side play and ended up with a score of 241. He scored a mere 56 runs through the off-side, displaying the mental toughness of a hallmark batsman.
#2 Silently makes the batsmen commit to the front-foot
A batsman who is good with his cover-drive almost involuntarily moves forward. A habit is inculcated which could come back to haunt them in time.
There are times when batsmen pre-meditate and stride their foot forward even before the ball gets delivered and is mostly for playing the ball through the extra-cover region. The cover drive is good enough to make the batsman come forward.
Bowlers, through technology and video replays, can easily make their way into the batsman’s mind. Bowlers with express pace can catch the batsman napping by bowling a bouncer. It’s quite evident that a batsman, committed to the front foot, will get ruffled by chin music.
It’s a reminder to the batsmen that they can’t take the bowlers for a walk. When the ball is outside the off-stump, there is a tendency to open the face and play the ball through the covers. Again it shows how the cover drive may be a roadblock to building an innings.
#3 Pitch conditions
Not all pitches are suitable for playing the outstretch-armed shot through the covers and the pitch has to be flat enough to execute the shot, while the bounce has to be trustable to get on top of and cream the ball through the covers.
Most importantly, the ball has to be a delicious half-volley, in order to negate the swing of the ball substantially. The nature of the turf is of prime importance for deciding to go on with the shot.
Playing the shot on a green top is no less than flirting with danger, more so when the ball has its gloss and shine intact. The new ball tends to do both in the air and off the pitch, while after the ball gets old, it still does enough off the pitch to keep the bowlers interested.
On a spitting cobra, there is an abundance of cracks. It only needs to land on one of those cracks to misbehave and trap the batsman.
#4 Imperfection
The cover drive requires an error free technique to connect handsomely and among all the drives, it’s the toughest of the lot.
On some instances, with shots played away from the body, batsmen often reach out for the delivery. As a result, the batsman loses shape and balance while playing the shot, and often edges the ball to the cordon of players behind the stumps.
The corridor of uncertainty also doesn’t help the shot. In this scenario, the push forward is pretty much half-hearted due to which the intent of playing the shot isn’t a full-fledged one.
Rahul Dravid once quoted “On the off-side, first there is god and then there is Sourav Ganguly”. Ganguly was a gem of a batsman on the off-side and a majestic cover-driver.
The following is a small piece of Dada’s dismissal statistics. Since caught behind is the most common form of dismissal in case of driving the ball, hence it’s taken into consideration.
Tests
| Matches | Number of Dismissals | Caught Behind | Percentage |
| 113 | 171 | 32 | 18.71 |
ODIs
| Matches | Number of Dismissals | Caught Behind | Percentage |
| 311 | 277 | 54 | 19.49 |
The above statistics only shows that even the best in the business isn’t completely susceptible from the vulnerability of poking outside the off-stump.
#5 The need to turn the cover drive to an “inside-out” shot
The inside-out shot is the lofted version of the extra-cover shot and is played over the infield, giving oneself room on the off-side. The shot is mostly played to the spinners with a little shimmy down the track and the most precarious part of the shot is that all three stumps are exposed while going inside-out.
There are two things which need to fall in place for the batsman to execute the shot with perfection – the ball should be taken at the half-volley and the batsman has to judge the trajectory of the ball to perfection.
If either goes awry, then the batsman will get himself into a tangle and, as a result, the percentage of the dismissal will rise up.
Ther cover-drive will always remain one of the classy strokes and that’s the reason why it’s one of the hardest stroke to execute. The difficulty level is equivalent to the back-of-the-hand slower delivery by bowlers.
If the shot is out of the screws, then it’s a screamer, but if doesn’t, then it obviously doesn’t look cool.
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