MEL­BOURNE–Head coach Phil Sim­mons has praised cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er for the way he has han­dled the con­stant pres­sure on the on­go­ing three-Test tour against Aus­tralia.

The tour has been a calami­ty so far for West In­dies on the field, re­sult­ing in fierce crit­i­cism of play­ers and Caribbean crick­et in gen­er­al, from Aus­tralian me­dia and tele­vi­sion pun­dits.

How­ev­er, Sim­mons said the 24-year-old Hold­er had faced up to the chal­lenges well and was dis­play­ing all the at­trib­ut­es of a good leader.

"Ja­son has an amaz­ing abil­i­ty to leave the pres­sure on the field and I think that is one of his strong points," Sim­mons told me­dia here.

"When he comes off the field he knows there's pres­sure on him as cap­tain and there are things to do but he's able to re­lax � if you can say re­lax � when he comes off and think about things ra­tio­nal­ly."

Hold­er has led West In­dies in on­ly three Tests fol­low­ing his ap­point­ment last Sep­tem­ber, af­ter wick­et­keep­er De­nesh Ramdin was sacked.

He en­dured a bap­tism of fire in Sri Lan­ka as the Windies lost both Tests and his painful ini­ti­a­tion con­tin­ued when West In­dies were ham­mered by an in­nings and 212 runs in the first Test in Ho­bart a fort­night ago.

De­spite this, Sim­mons said Hold­er had re­mained fo­cussed and was tak­ing every­thing in stride.

"He knows there's a lot of pres­sure from be­ing West In­dies cap­tain and he's tak­en to it like a duck to wa­ter. He knows what he has to do," the Trinida­di­an ex­plained.

"He speaks his mind to the play­ers when they don't do what he ex­pects them to do � which is what I ex­pect of a cap­tain � and he prais­es every­body when they do well so I think he has the right at­trib­ut­es and he's cop­ing with the pres­sure re­al­ly well."

Sim­mons, a for­mer West In­dies all-rounder, said Hold­er had been helped by ad­vice from among the play­ing squad and the sup­port staff � es­pe­cial­ly chair­man of se­lec­tors Clive Lloyd who ar­rived here last week.

"He's get­ting a lot of help. On the field you can see help es­pe­cial­ly from Jerome Tay­lor in the chang­ing of bowlers and talk­ing to bowlers and things like that and off the field from the coach­ing staff," Sim­mons not­ed.

"I'm sure he's get­ting help from some­one like Clive Lloyd. I'm sure he's speak­ing to him be­cause as one of the great­est cap­tains we've had, he would've got­ten a lot of ad­vice from Clive too.

"I al­ways think hav­ing Lloy­die (Clive Lloyd) around is a good thing be­cause guys go speak to him one-on-one and even in the nets at the back end, you can see him speak­ing to [play­ers] so I think it's a good thing to have him here."

West In­dies faced Aus­tralia in the sec­ond Test start­ing last night at the Mel­bourne Crick­et Ground.