England will hope the return of captain Joe Root proves inspirational in the second Test against the West Indies at Old Trafford starting Thursday.
Root missed England’s four-wicket defeat at Southampton in international cricket’s return from lockdown last week after attending the birth of his second child.
He has rejoined the squad, with West Indies needing just one win from the two remaining Tests at Old Trafford to clinch a first series win in England for 32 years.
Although all three fixtures are being played behind closed doors because of the pandemic, Root will be in a familiar situation.
England have now lost the opening match of a series for the eighth time in ten campaigns, a run dating back to the 2017/18 Ashes in Australia. Most recently in South Africa they did recover from a heavy defeat in the first Test to win that series 3-1.
Meanwhile, with six Tests in seven weeks, including three against Pakistan, England could yet recall Broad in Manchester, having already said they plan to rotate their battery of quicks.
It was West Indies fast bowler Shannon Gabriel, however, who was named man-of-the-match in the first Test for a nine-wicket haul.
Gabriel was only included in the squad after being named as a reserve following ankle surgery.
Given the second Test starts just days after the end of the first, fitness is likely to be the West Indies’ biggest issue as they return to Old Trafford, the venue for their quarantine period amid the pandemic and two subsequent intra-squad warm-up matches.
The West Indies arrived in England with many doubting if their batsmen could give an impressive fast-bowling unit enough runs to play with. But they built a first-innings lead of over a hundred runs at Southampton after captain Jason Holder took a Test-best 6-42 in England’s lowly 204.
Set 200 to win, the West Indies did then collapse to 27-3.
But Blackwood stepped up, even if the rashness that has characterised his stop-start West Indies career saw him fall five runs short of what would have been only his second Test century.
