BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Chief se­lec­tor Roger Harp­er has praised de­posed cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er’s at­ti­tude dur­ing the re­cent Sri Lan­ka se­ries, con­tend­ing the all-rounder had been “ex­em­plary” in his ap­proach and a source of in­spi­ra­tion for his team­mates.

The 29-year-old Hold­er was sacked as cap­tain pri­or to the se­ries and re­placed by fel­low Bar­ba­di­an Kraigg Brath­waite, but re­mained a sem­i­nal fig­ure through­out the two-Test rub­ber which end­ed in a nil-all stale­mate on Good Fri­day.

He av­er­aged 69 with the bat while scor­ing an un­beat­en half-cen­tu­ry in the sec­ond Test, and al­so fin­ished the se­ries with sev­en wick­ets af­ter tak­ing a five-wick­et haul in the first in­nings of the open­ing Test.

“I thought Ja­son per­formed very well. He got a five-wick­et haul in the first Test match and then of course the [71 not out] in the last in­nings as well,” Harp­er point­ed out.

“But even more than his per­for­mance was the way he went about his busi­ness. I think from watch­ing him in the nets and on the field you al­ways heard him en­cour­ag­ing the play­ers, try­ing to lift the guys and keep them re­al­ly in high spir­its.

“He’s been the livewire. He’s re­al­ly han­dled things very well and in an ex­em­plary fash­ion, and has con­tin­ued to be the type of leader we know some­one with his ex­pe­ri­ence can be and that’s im­por­tant for the team.”

One of the youngest ever Windies Test cap­tains when he was ap­point­ed at age 23, Hold­er led West In­dies in 37 of his 47 Tests – win­ning 11, los­ing 21 and draw­ing five games.

His cap­tain­cy came un­der in­tense scruti­ny fol­low­ing the side’s heavy de­feats in New Zealand last De­cem­ber and his fate was sealed when he skipped the tour of Bangladesh ear­li­er this year and stand-in skip­per Brath­waite in­spired a se­vere­ly weak­ened side to a 2-0 white­wash.

Harp­er said the de­ci­sion to re­move Hold­er as cap­tain had been a sober one but had al­so been nec­es­sary in help­ing to main­tain the new cul­ture formed in Bangladesh.

“It was a de­ci­sion that took a lot of thought, a lot of de­lib­er­a­tion,” the for­mer Guyana and West In­dies off-spin­ner told Star­com Ra­dio’s Ma­son and Guest crick­et show.

“But I think the sort of spir­it we saw in Bangladesh – the per­for­mance of course made a big dif­fer­ence – but the sort of spir­it, the sort of fight, the sort of de­ter­mi­na­tion we saw in that team, we want­ed that to con­tin­ue so that re­al­ly in­flu­enced our de­ci­sion.”

Brath­waite, how­ev­er, ap­peared fired up by the man­tle of lead­er­ship and broke a long drought to post his first Test cen­tu­ry in three years, en route to gath­er­ing 237 runs at an av­er­age of 59.

The hun­dred – 126 in the first in­nings of the sec­ond Test – was his ninth over­all and saw him be­come the 16th West In­dies bats­man to pass 4 000 runs in the longest for­mat.

Per­for­mance apart, Harp­er said Brath­waite’s will­ing­ness to be in­no­v­a­tive es­pe­cial­ly on the flat wick­ets at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Sta­di­um in An­tigua, made his cap­tain­cy stand out.

“I think that Kraigg has done a good job in this se­ries. I think the pitch as you know has been very flat but what you saw from Kraigg was his will­ing­ness to try dif­fer­ent things,” Harp­er stressed.

“A will­ing­ness not just to sit back but a will­ing­ness to try things to see if they [could] cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties and that’s a pos­i­tive go­ing for­ward. I think with Kraigg as well, you see a lot more of the team in­volved in sup­port­ing so that’s good.”

(CMC)