Every batting shot on one interactive ground — from the forward defence to the Dilscoop. Tap a shot to see exactly where it scores, how risky it is, and which fielders are waiting for it.
Prefer reading to tapping? Every shot on the map, alphabetically. Select any name to highlight it on the ground above.
Shots played with a vertical bat (drives, defence, glances) meet the ball with the full face — safer, because a small error still finds bat. Horizontal-bat shots (cuts, pulls, sweeps) swing across the ball’s line: more power square of the wicket, less margin for error.
Full deliveries pull the batter forward into drives and sweeps; short ones push them back into cuts and pulls. Reading length — choosing the right foot within a fraction of a second — is the single biggest skill in batting.
The corridor between mid off and mid on. New batters are told to play in the V because a straight swing meets the ball for the longest possible time. The wider the shot goes from the V, the more the timing has to be perfect.
Along the ground can’t be caught — that’s the whole gospel. Every aerial shot trades safety for boundaries. The risk meter on each shot shows the trade: a forward defence is a 1, the Dilscoop — played millimetres over your own stumps and skull — is a 5.
There is no official count — but shots group into six broad families: defensive shots, vertical-bat drives, horizontal-bat cuts and pulls, glances and flicks off the pads, sweeps against spin, and modern inventions like ramps, scoops and switch hits. This page maps 31 recognised shots, and commentators coin new names every season.
The V is the arc between mid off and mid on — the region a straight bat naturally hits into. Coaches drill juniors to “play in the V” because the full face of a straight-swinging bat meets the ball for longer than any cross-bat swing, making it the safest scoring zone in the game.
Both are horizontal-bat shots at short balls, but the height and direction differ. The pull is played to a ball around chest height and dragged in front of square, usually kept down. The hook meets a ball at chest-to-head height and sends it behind square — almost always in the air, which is why it’s the riskier of the two.
Most professionals nominate the on drive: the front leg blocks the swing path, so the shot demands perfect balance and a dead-still head. Among modern shots, the switch hit is arguably harder still — the batter reverses grip and stance entirely while a ball travels 20 metres at 140 km/h.
Sri Lanka’s Tillakaratne Dilshan popularised the scoop straight over the wicketkeeper’s head at the 2009 World T20, and the shot took his name. The wider scoop family is older — Zimbabwe’s Douglas Marillier famously scooped Australia’s bowlers over fine leg in 2001.
Yes. When Kevin Pietersen unveiled it in 2008, the MCC reviewed the shot and ruled it legal: the batter assumes all the risk by changing stance, so the advantage was judged fair. The Laws fix the off and leg side from the batter’s stance as the bowler runs in — so a switch-hitter can still be out LBW to a ball pitching outside what was originally off stump, even though that side has just become their new leg side.
The leave — playing no shot at all — followed by the forward defence. Among scoring shots, anything hit along the ground with a vertical bat carries the least risk, because a grounded ball cannot be caught. That’s why coaches preach “keep it on the carpet”.
A drive is a vertical-bat shot played through the line of a full ball, in front of the wicket. A cut is a horizontal-bat shot played square or behind square to a short, wide ball, using its width and bounce. Simply: full balls get driven, short-and-wide balls get cut.