This article is part of the “How to Improve Your Batting Shot Selection” series. To see the full list of shots click here.

With its stylish flourish, the cover drive will always get your team-mates roaring “shot!” as you blaze the ball away. Yet, it’s a paradox of a shot.

This article is part of the “How to Improve Your Batting Shot Selection” series. To see the full list of shots click here.

The crowd-pleasing cover drive gets all the glamour and attention. Meanwhile really good batsmen know that the on drive is a far more useful shot.

Look in the old-fashioned coaching book gathering dust on your shelf and you will see the shot selection mantras. If you have batted at any level you know that shot selection is way more nuanced.

The best cricketers appear to have two or more shots to every ball.

They know exactly when to use these shots and when to cut them out. Tendulkar famously scored 241 without a cover drive (he thought it was too risky to play).

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

 Being a consistent cricketer isn’t always as good as we imagine.

As decent level players we search for better consistency. We have had good performances in the past. We dream the purple patches will come again. Every shot you play beats the in-field and every ball you bowl finds the outside edge to a pair of safe hands.

The captain is the all powerful dictator of a cricket team. At first glance it’s his tactical nous that makes a group of individuals into a team and wins matches.

Despite this appearance, good teams operate with a collective consciousness that is greater than even the captain. It’s almost like the Borg. Just like the science-fiction hive mind race, when you are all working together, resistance is futile.

When you play a team you’ve beaten before you relax. You have figured them out.

You don’t need special strategies you can play the cookie-cutter way: win the toss and bat first. It’s in the bag.

Something tells me you don’t have a good leg spin coach where you play, but that still doesn’t stop you bursting to get better as a leg spinner.

You have got a grip on the basics. You have played enough games to know what’s going on. But you don’t know what to do next.

In other words, you are stuck in a rut and don’t have anyone to turn to.

Setting a total in a one day match relies on the ability of a team to judge what a good score is on that day. It depends on conditions and relative team abilities, all of which need to be assessed from match to match.

Yet in club cricket, a total of 200 always comes up as the ‘magic’ score that will lead to inevitable victory.

The revolutionary PitchVision Academy Problem Solver has had a major upgrade.

Judging by the number of questions we get here at PitchVision Academy, a lot of players and coaches have a cricketing problem they need solving. Everyone has something; a technical flaw in the cover drive, not quick enough bowling, getting gassed with low fitness levels and a hundred other things.

We also know that there is a frustrating gap for most of us.

This is a guest article from AB, a club left arm spinner and aggressive batsman with more than 15 years experience. His claim to fame is a 50 run partnership with JP Duminy.

If you bowl obvious variations thinking you are going to outwit the idiot at the other end, all a decent batsman is going to do is make you look foolish by putting your well thought out “other one” into the trees over cow corner.