BRIDGETOWN–Test and One-Day cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er says West In­dies must start win­ning games if they want to make any progress in the in­ter­na­tion­al rank­ings.

The re­gion­al side cur­rent­ly lan­guish at num­ber eight in the Test rank­ings and num­ber nine in ODIs and Hold­er said with up­com­ing se­ries against high­er-ranked teams, it was im­por­tant the Windies found some lev­el of con­sis­ten­cy.

"We want to make that steady pro­gres­sion up but we can't jump ahead of teams that high­er ranked than us un­less we play high­er-ranked sides in terms of the points sys­tem," Hold­er said.

"If you look at our up­com­ing sched­ule, we have Sri Lan­ka who is ahead of us, we've got In­dia in the New Year and Aus­tralia at the end of the year–these are all teams that are ranked high­er than us.

"The thing is not to fall fur­ther than where we are at this present time and gain points by win­ning some games against them. You can jump a hell of a lot fur­ther up the chan­nel if you beat these teams that ranked high­er than you."

West In­dies are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for their tour of Sri Lan­ka where they play two Tests, three ODIs and two Twen­ty20s against the hosts who are ranked sev­enth in Tests and fifth in one-day­ers.

The Caribbean side have not beat­en Sri Lan­ka in a Test se­ries in 12 years and lost their last one-day se­ries there four years ago.

Hold­er, who will be on his first tour as Test cap­tain af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed ear­li­er this month, said con­sis­ten­cy was the key to break­ing this los­ing trend.

"This is al­ways our aim–to win crick­et games. Ob­vi­ous­ly we haven't been con­sis­tent in a sense over the last few years but we need to in­stil the con­sis­ten­cy in the dress­ing room and get the guys un­der­stand­ing what is re­quired of them in terms of roles and in terms of dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios which they maybe [faced with] in cer­tain games," he ex­plained.

"I think my­self and the coach (Phil Sim­mons) have a good idea of the di­rec­tion we want to go in and we'll make a lit­tle tin­ker here and there as we make pro­gres­sion go­ing for­ward.

"I am sure that once we set things up in terms of a good dress­ing room then we can make that pro­gres­sion steadi­ly up­wards."

West In­dies' poor ODI rank­ing saw them ex­clud­ed from the 2017 Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy for the first time.

And while Hold­er de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as "dis­heart­en­ing", he said West In­dies need­ed to con­tin­ue fo­cussing on im­prov­ing their rank­ing.

"I try to con­trol what I can. Ob­vi­ous­ly it is very dis­heart­en­ing not to make the Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy ... but again that's be­yond my con­trol," said the 23-year-old.

"I think we were the on­ly ter­ri­to­ry that hadn't played (one-day) crick­et since the World Cup and we didn't give our­selves the ad­e­quate chance to qual­i­fy for the Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy.

"Again that's be­yond my con­trol ... that's up to the West In­dies Crick­et Board to de­ter­mine what crick­et we play and what crick­et we don't play." (CMC)