Vin­ode Mam­chan

West In­dies cap­tain De­nesh Ramdin is call­ing on the mak­ers of crick­et hel­mets to im­prove on their prod­uct, in light of the death of Aus­tralian bats­man Phillip Hugh­es, who was felled by a bounc­er from Sean Ab­bott.

Ramdin made the com­ments as the West In­dies left the Caribbean yes­ter­day for South Africa to en­gage that coun­try in a three-Test se­ries.

Ramdin said: "The hel­mets that we have need­sto be im­proved be­cause when you get a lash on it, you re­al­ly feel the pain. It is ba­si­cal­ly just a piece of fi­bre­glass and this is not ad­e­quate pro­tec­tion."

There is no in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark for stan­dards on hel­mets and the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) had put a com­mit­tee in place to look at this in 2013.

Now with the death of hugh­es, they were like­ly to fas­track this process, so that hel­met man­u­fac­tur­ers will have to make a spe­cif­ic grade in or­der to be used on the mar­ket.

Mean­while, Ramdin said that his team will be look­ing to give South Africa a run for their mon­ey.

"This team is very tough but we have good play­ers on our team and we are go­ing to give them a run. We just need to keep fo­cus and do the right things con­sis­tent­ly and we will get the re­sults we want," he said.

"The se­nior play­ers in­clud­ing my­self have to lead from the front and the younger play­ers have to take their lead."

The West In­dies open their tour with a warm-up match against a South African In­vi­ta­tion­al XI at Benoni on De­cem­ber 10 and this will be fol­lowed by the first Test, to be played at Cen­tu­ri­on on De­cem­ber 17.

They then play the Box­ing Day Test match at Port Eliz­a­beth on De­cem­ber 26 and the fi­nal game starts on Jan­u­ary 2 at Capetown.

Af­ter this three T20s and five ODIs will be played be­fore the team re­turns home for the short break, ahead of the World Cup in New Zealand and Aus­tralia in Feb­ru­ary.