Who is Jermaine Blackwood?
A 28-year-old middle-order batsman from Jamaica, Blackwood is a natural stroke maker, having played more than 100 first-class games in his career.
He used to be the leading run-scorer in the 2013-14 domestic first-class season in West Indies, and on the back of that form, Blackwood made his Test debut in June 2014, all the way through the home Test series against New Zealand, where he made 63 on debut.
A steady in the side until the tour of Zimbabwe in October 2017, he made nine fifties and a hundred (against England, in 2015) but fell off the radar thereafter, having scored just 15 runs in his final five innings in that period, and been dropped by the side.
Strong performances in the domestic first-class system kept Blackwood inside touching distance of the West Indies first XI, but barring a brief appearance as a concussion substitute against India in 2019, he did not make the team until the first Test against England in Southampton.
How did Blackwood make the cut for the first Test?
Before the pandemic curtailed the 2020 first-class season in West Indies after eight matches, right-handed batsman Blackwood used to be the tournament’s highest run scorer, pummelling 768 runs in 15 innings for Jamaica, which included a double hundred against Leeward Islands in the tournament’s final match.
Roger Harper, West Indies’ chairman of selectors said ahead of the tour that Blackwood marked a return to the side “on the sheer weight” of his first-class performances. Harper had also praised Blackwood’s “patience and consistency” in 2020.
But Blackwood might not have featured in the series at all, had it not been for the decision made by Shimron Hetmyer and Darren Bravo to not tour England. That meant Blackwood made the 14-man squad for the Test series as a middle-order replacement for the players who did not go back and forth. That said, Blackwood made only 62 runs in four innings all the way through the tourists’ intra-squad warm-up games, and might have been the man left out whether West Indies had opted to play a specialist spinner in Rahkeem Cornwall.
What special relationship does Blackwood share with England?
Blackwood’s only Test century came in 2015 when England were touring the Caribbean, and over 41% of his Test runs have come against them.
Including his match-winning 95 in the fourth innings at Southampton, Blackwood has made three fifties and a hundred against England. His average of 55 against England is the most productive among all current West Indies players and stands at the back of only Lawrence Rowe, George Headley, Viv Richards, Brian Lara and Garry Sobers.
His unbeaten 112 at North Sound in 2015 earned West Indies victory and his 85 in the third Test at Bridgetown set things up for the hosts before he hit the winning runs in the fourth innings.
When West Indies toured England in 2017, Blackwood’s 79 at Birmingham used to be the lone contribution of note as West Indies slumped to beat in the first Test after Alastair Cook pumped 243 in the first innings. After that, he made a very powerful contributions of 49 and 41 in the Headingley Test that followed, which West Indies won on the back of twin centuries from Shai Hope.
And with an possibility presented in 2020, Blackwood delivered again with a fourth-innings 95 to help West Indies navigate out of a tricky chase and help them take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.
What’s changed for Blackwood?
Blackwood entered the Test series believing he had something to prove. Ahead of the series, he said that his new batting mantra used to be to “bat so long as conceivable” as he wished to change the “flawed impressions” people had of him.
“It’s been two-and-a-half years that I’ve been out of the Test team,” Blackwood had said all the way through the intra-squad warm-up game West Indies played before the first Test. “This possibility has come out and I have to seize it with both hands. I have something to go available in the market and prove against the entire best bowlers on this planet, I wish to score runs against them.”
Before the squad flew out to England, Blackwood had stated what changes he had made to his game. “Presently, it is a more made up our minds Jermaine Blackwood and a more focused Jermaine Blackwood,” he said. “Being dropped helped me to return and work on my game and my mental space, and to come back strong. It wasn’t anything too much to do with the technical aspect of batting, only a few little tweaks. But the mental side, I had to change a bit. I did numerous reading just to help my mental space going forward. That’s in point of fact helped me.”
After the intra-squad game, he said: “It’s approximately patience for me, spending a number of time in the middle. That does not say whether I am getting a poor ball I may not put it to the boundary. I don’t change too much of my shot selection. It’s just staying a bit more patient, batting numerous deliveries – trying to bat for a complete day, or a day-and-a-half.”
Blackwood did that magnificently against a hostile pace attack led by Jofra Archer on the last day of the Southampton Test. Despite falling just five runs short of a second Test hundred, his 95 used to be the first page of a new chapter in Blackwood’s Test career as West Indies took the series lead.