The Indian batting great made an impactful suggestions to the fortunes of this Calypso cricketer and inspired him to better heights after the 2019 series.
The Caribbean is a place where it all started for Virat Kohli in Test cricket. The Indian batting great, who made his long-form debut in 2011 in Jamaica, is into his fourth Test match trip of the region and is approaching the forthcoming two-match series with the need to make amends on a rather unsatisfactory record: average of 35.61 over 9 Tests and 13 innings.
For one West Indies middle-order batter, however, Kohli’s return to the shores in 2019 as an India captain was his most fruitful and giving, and led to a career-transforming impact on him. That player was Jermaine Blackwood, who stood at the crossroads with his Test match game at the time and could do with the legend’s word of advice on his game.
Making his comeback after being dropped from the side for best part of two years following the 2017 trip to Zimbabwe, Blackwood, who faced stern question marks on his high-end aggressive methods, including that instinctive drive on the up often played regardless of the length, turned his career around after being ears to Kohli.
The former India skipper told his Caribbean counterpart to imbibe more patience about his game and look to face more balls in the middle, stating that the runs would ultimately follow, which they did.
From his return back in 2019 via the India series at the beginning of the two team’s campaign in the inaugural cycle of the World Test Championship (WTC), Blackwood has managed to arrest his slide a lot better after being found out against top-level oppositions and has played multiple influential knocks, especially on tricky Caribbean surfaces.
The player has struck his runs at nearly 10 runs better apiece in Test match wins than his norm from the point of return four years back, playing a major role in notable triumphs over England and Pakistan.
“Being dropped helped me to go back and work on my game and my mental space,” Blackwood told ESPNcricinfo in an interview in 2020, convinced that he has now found a trick to aid his attacking instincts – “To bat as long as possible,” an advice given by Kohli via conversations during the 2019 series.
“He just said, ‘What will you do when you score a century? How many deliveries did you face?’ I said I faced 212 balls. He said, ‘That’s it, once you can bat some balls, you’re going to score runs’. So I took a big thing from that.”
