The cover-drive and it's complexities

#4 Imperfection

Cover drives often lead to outside edges

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.