Cover drive, the royal stroke!

By Rajadhyax

 

A batsman driving the ball through the covers and picking a boundary is one of the most majestic sights in the world of cricket. It’s a pleasing display of a bat dominating ball and it’s as close to slapping a bowler in the face as you can come in this game. This is a shot where the batsman plants his foot forward, outside the line of his off-stump and strokes the ball in the region of cover or extra-cover, to stamp his authority on the game.

 

Though virtually all the batsmen of international level play the shot, there are those whose cover drive is just too mesmerising to be forgotten. Each of the batting greats in this article played the shot differently, but each leaves an indelible mark on our minds with the way he played it. So here are some of the ‘master’ best known for the shot…..

 

·         David Gower (England): Gower played the cover drive with consummate ease and grace you normally associate with a ballet dancer. On impact of bat and ball it never seemed the ball would reach even thirty yards, but it eventually sped beyond the boundary. Perhaps his only limitation was that against spin he could not play it with the same authority.

·         Sunil Gavaskar (India): Everything Gavaskar did was with clinic precision and study of an expert surgeon. In case of the cover drive, his was the shot that coaching manuals will vouch for: head right over the ball, left foot to the pitch of the ball, impact below the line of the chin, everything was just right. ‘Copy-book cover drive’ is a phrase often uttered by the TV commentator when he played the shot. 

·         Martin Crowe (New Zealand): Probably the only person in this list who played the shot with a totally erect posture was this Kiwi genius. A cricket coach tells you to bend over the ball to keep it on the ground. But this amazing man drove the ball will little bend and yet hardly skied it to the cover fielder.

·         Vivian Richards (West Indies): In cricket history, brute power and shots screaming to the line are often associated with this man. Almost always he played the cover drive on the rise; which means even when the bowler has not over pitched, he could get a four for the shot. And those massive forearms generated power enough to bring the advertisement boards crashing down.

·         Zaheer Abbas (Pakistan): Left handed batsmen look stylish. But Zaheer Abbas comes from a rare variety of right-handed batsmen who had some very stylish strokes. His cover drive was easily the most good looking of shots from his repertoire. There was a hint of casual elegance in his cover-drive that suggested to the bowler as if it was too easy to drive him through the covers.

·         Greg Chappell (Australia): Words like ‘exquisite’ come to the mind to describe this man driving the ball anywhere on the off-side. The only similarity of his shot with Gavaskar will be that he too followed a copy-book style. Very correct in technique, he also played the shot in a more erect posture than desired but he made a sweet impact with the ball and four was generally the result of the effort.

·         Sachin Tendulkar (India): At his best, this man can drive any bowler (paceman or spinner) through the covers with power and elegance and look absolutely in command of the situation. Perfectly good-length balls that others may defend back to the bowler and push in covers for a single, Sachin can send them blistering through to the boundary.

·         Arvinda De Silva (Sri Lanka): He used to shuffle a lot in the crease, thus giving himself more of a chance to go behind the line of the ball. Such batsmen play more in the ‘V’ behind the bowler’s arm and less through covers or mid-wicket. But he still managed to make those rasping cover drives, often from length-balls, just like Sachin Tendulkar.

·         Brian Lara (West Indies): His cover drive was poetry in motion. It would happen in one, cohesive and fluid motion of feet and bat that also displayed excellent hand-eye coordination. He played a ball more fine than square, but got the results and there are those big hundreds to support the claim. Perhaps his only limitation being that he did it better against medium pacers than spinners.