Innovative Cricketing Shots

Cricket is called as gentleman’s game may be due to fact that it was invented by the English. There are lot of innovative shots played by batsmen in cricket to upset the bowlers rhythm. Here are some shots which I find very unconventional in game like cricket.

Reverse Sweep

The most commonly played uncommon shot.Reverse sweep is a reverse cross-batted sweep shot played in the opposite direction to the standard sweep, thus instead of sweeping the ball to the leg side, it is swept to the off side, towards backward point or third man.he advantage of a reverse sweep is that it effectively reverses the fielding positions and thus is very difficult to set a field to.t was first regularly played in the 1970s by the Pakistani batsman Mushtaq Mohammad, though Mushtaq’s brother Hanif Mohammad is sometimes credited as the inventor. Andy Flower of Zimbabwe and Damien Martin of Australia were two of the finest executers of reverse sweep.

Switch Hit

A switch hit is a shot pioneered by Kevin Pietersen in 2008, and swi first used during the New Zealand series in England in 2008. In this shot, a batsman changes his handedness and posture to adopt a stance the mirror image of his traditional handedness while the bowler is running in to bowl.


Marillier Scoop

It is played to short pitched straight ball that would traditionally be defended or, more aggressively, pulled to the leg side – both shots "off the back foot". To play a scoop shot, the batsman is on the front foot and aims to get beneath the bounce of the ball and hit it directly behind the stumps, up and over the wicket keeper. This shot, though risky in the execution, has the advantage of being aimed at a section of the field where a fielder is very rarely placed – particularly in Twenty20 and ODI cricket where the number of outfielders is limited.


The Dilscoop is a cricket batting stroke developed by Sri Lankan dil right-handed batsman Tillakaratne Dilshan during the ICC World Twenty20 held during June 2009 in England. Fittingly the shot is named after Dilshan himself.

The basis of the stroke is to go on one knee to a good length or slightly short of length delivery off a fast or medium paced bowler and ‘scoop’ the ball over the head of the wicket keeper. The ball travels straight towards the boundary behind the wicket keeper.

Paddle Sweep

This shot was invented by Colin Cowdrey. This was mpaddleade famous  by Sachin Tendulkar against Shane Warne. He used this shot effectively to score when Warne employed negative line in bowling to cut scoring of runs.


Some other innovative shots are Robin Uthappa’s shot in which he takes walk down the pitch and slaps the ball over bowlers head.

Brendon McCullum’s  ramp shot in which  involves the batsmen squatting down and scooping deliveries back over the wicketkeepers head.


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Posted on July 5, 2010, in Cricket, Sports and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Comments Off on Innovative Cricketing Shots.

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