Jermaine Blackwood Reveals How Virat Kohli Helped Him To Change His Batting Approach

Jermaine Blackwood Explained how Virat Kohli’s suggestion had a big impact on him to change his batting approach and made him positive to stay in the crease for a long time. Jermaine Blackwood is one of the upcoming stars of the West Indies with his calm and composed batting style. He has played important knocks for West Indies in tests with the recent century coming against New Zealand in tough conditions. He also added an important 99 in the famous win against England at Southampton.

Jermaine had scored heaps amount of runs in the domestic circuit before entering into the international frame. He had a lot of talent and he had to put his talent into performances for the West Indies cricket board to support him. He worked on his batting a lot, he changed his technique a little, and he played outstanding innings against England last year and he was unfortunate to get out with five runs for a well-deserved century.

Virat Kohli’s Few Words On Batting

Blackwood told that he doesn’t like to have conversations with international players but Virat Kohli’s suggestion had changed him. He asked Kohli about converting his half-centuries into Centuries, and Kohli had just suggested Blackwood to play a lot more deliveries and he will eventually attain the mark. This had made a huge impact on Blackwood that he can score against any opponents in the world if he is willing to spend time on the crease.

“I don’t really have a lot of conversations with international players. I talked to Virat Kohli a few times as well, on social media. The last time India toured the Caribbean, I had a chance to talk to him in Jamaica when I was there subbing.

So, after the game, I just had a small conversation. I asked him about how all the time that I have a lot of half-centuries and one century. 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,” said Jermaine Blackwood.

Russell Gives Valuable Advice To Jermaine Blackwood

Jermaine Blackwood also mentioned about Andre Russell being one of his closest and both the players have spoken about shot selection a lot. Andre Russell, who has played one Test match for  theWest Indies is one of the best strikers of the cricket ball in the world, and Blackwood also mentioned about Russell knowing the game really well.

“Me and Russell did a lot of talking. We are very close. I need to improve in kicking on and getting more hundreds. We mostly talk about my shot selections. When I started playing for the West Indies, I was young and excited. My style of batting was to play a lot of shots and put the bowlers under pressure,” Jermaine Blackwood added.

“What I learned was that you couldn’t make a hundred in an over or two. You have to spend hours at the crease. I did a lot of talking with Russell, and he gave me a lot of pointers on what I needed to do. Not because of just T20s. He only played one Test match, but he is a guy who knows his cricket.”

West Indies are currently in Bangladesh for a two-test series starting on February 3.