Jermaine Blackwood: A Brave Spark That Can Reignite The West Indies

After making 23 of his team’s first inning score of 138, Jermaine Blackwood fired a 104 in the second innings. But even scoring nearly forty per cent of his team’s entire output, the gritty right-hander couldn’t stop the inevitable: yet another embarrassing display by the West Indies. This is when names like Brooks, Bravo, and […]
 
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Jermaine Blackwood: A Brave Spark That Can Reignite The West Indies
After making 23 of his team’s first inning score of 138, Jermaine Blackwood fired a 104 in the second innings. But even scoring nearly forty per cent of his team’s entire output, the gritty right-hander couldn’t stop the inevitable: yet another embarrassing display by the West Indies. This is when names like Brooks, Bravo, and Chase didn’t reach double-digit scores in the first inning and Alzarri Joseph (89, second inning) fired more runs than mainstream batsmen.
 
Though, on his part, the St. Elizabeth Parish-born Jermaine Blackwood has been in similar situations before, where he’s played the role of a man undaunted by the situation, which is why it is about one sat up and noted this fearless bat.
 
When the West Indies arrived in England earlier this year in July, bringing Cricket back from the dead (how else are you going to put it), few would’ve placed their bets on Jermaine Blackwood to fire.
 
Not because the right hander can’t bat or hold onto his own.
 
Heck, in Test match cricket, his strike rate, touching 59, is only a few blasting hits shy of the Universe Boss’s 60.
 
It’s because when you have a batsman in an International team, one that’s seen what many describe as “days of the yore,” you cannot command headlines sporting a batting average that’s barely 30.
Jermaine Blackwood: A Brave Spark That Can Reignite The West Indies
 
So that Jermaine Blackwood became the headlining material of the First win, blasting 95 of his team’s 200 at Southampton, it drew our attention to an adage we conveniently forget.
 
Am I trying to direct your attention toward: “It’s not about the size of the dog rather the size of the fight in the dog that matters?”
 
In a world that functions on cliches with about the same enthusiasm it undermines the need for simplicity- let’s just contend with a fact.
 
Appearances are deceptive.
 
And they probably couldn’t have gotten any more deceptive than Jermaine Blackwood.
 
So while I’ll spare you the horror of running down the classic cliched description that some feel befits the Jamaican: a pint-size warrior or pocket-sized dynamo- I’ll simply say Jermaine Blackwood is a different.
 
For someone, we’ve probably forgotten Test debuted against New Zealand ( NZ in the Caribbean, 2014) with a half century (63 off 110, 2 sixes) at Brian Lara-land only to be dropped the very next game at Barbados, life’s not always been rosy.
 
But lotuses often bloom amid decay.
 
And while the simple, “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” 29-year-old is no Bodhisatva or the holder of the most outstanding records, but he is a key member today of a side that his captain Jason can’t do without.
 
Not only since he is comfortable stepping on the front foot to the great Jimmy Anderson, but also since, he’s pure unbridled Caribbean spirit of a kind that doesn’t need to resort to bling and ostentatious display of wealth on social media to stand out.
 
That we don’t note much of Blackwood- who fired, not accumulate- 112 off 220 in the very first opportunity he got to square off against England in the Caribbean (First Test at Antigua, 2015) – is probably because he believes in the sound created by the bat, not by musings delivered to stand out from the crowd in a world obsessed by social media gimmickry.
 
Jermaine Blackwood: A Brave Spark That Can Reignite The West Indies
 
On top of it, that his maiden Test hundred, fired with similar flair one spotted in the Rose Bowl heroics saw the West Indies draw the game,  was a sign of much-needed change.
 
Wasn’t that hard to see that the familiar narratives were changing: the West Indies from 2015 onward upto this point- was no longer a team that was going to bend or be taken lightly, in stark contrast to spineless surrenders we’ve seen so often seen from 2009 onwards.
 
Sure, Jermaine Blackwood mustn’t take his place lightly in the side akin to the underrated masculinity of his bludgeoning willow, one that authored another 2015 triumph at West Indies’ famous fortress by the name of Bridgetown, Barbados.
 
Remember the 47 in 104 and the winning runs at Sir Sobers-land, that lent support to a Darren Bravo-special?
 
Don’t you find it strange that when one Jamaican comes to light- that too in a format where the team’s strengths don’t essentially warrant big celebrations- we hardly celebrate it with the same zeal that accompanies an Andre Russell hit out of the park that happens maybe not every day in T20Is?
 
But constructive criticism kept aside, Blackwood must do well to remember his task going ahead in the New Zealand series or for that matter, the ones following it, isn’t going to be easy.
 
The West Indies are still very much ‘work-in-progress’ albeit one whose recent sparks are too bright to ignore. And it is here where the uncomplicated batsman becomes all the more relevant.
 
Let’s face facts.
 
Hope has been dropped. That Shai, easily the classiest batsman to have worn the West Indian jersey, has, at the behest of continued disappointments proven himself Hopeless, doesn’t make things easy.
 
John Campbell, whose claim to fame is very much the ODI fireworks against Ireland in 2019, has looked uncertain and is rather fortunate to have been picked after throwing away decent starts down in England.
 
Dowrich and Holder – two fine batsmen if not absolute dynamites down the order – would still need someone to anchor.
 
Darren Bravo, who the world should remember is more than a Brian Lara prototype: a weirdly gifted mixed bag- the scorer of arguably the most dogged double hundred seen by a West Indian in a decade in New Zealand- is still in and out of the team.
 
Gladly, we shall see him wearing Test whites again after he stained it with hapless performances against India who bullied the Caribbean in 2019.
 
Thankfully, there’s Roston Chase, 1,850 Test runs with 5 centuries (2 more than Hope, his fellow Barbadian), and also 2 more centuries than Holder (albeit 8 fewer Tests) lends the team substance it so needs.
 
Then there’s Kraigg Brathwaite- the familiar grafter with unfulfilled talent responsible for that crafty 212- his finest Test knock in that it came against a Jimmy Anderson-led attack.
 
That he’s not even touched an average of 40 despite 62 Test appearances makes the Bajan a man you still expect to turn things gives he’s got against his name unquestionably impressive knocks of 134 and 95 at the famous 2017 Headingley triumph.
 
All Blackwood must do now is to be himself: express himself the way he does, unperturbed by whatever the heck the opposition is. But you’d want him to just play himself in and familiarise to conditions he’s not really seemed an alien to, given his has been a hand in victories forged both amid home comfort and away from it.
 
No?
 
Go on Jermaine, tell ‘em you’re steel. Though shall fight on and build further.