BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Sir Andy Roberts has de­scribed all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er as a “damn good crick­eter” but says he is “lost” as a cap­tain, and should look to the coach­ing staff for help dur­ing match­es.

Point­ing to his field place­ments, the out­spo­ken leg­endary for­mer West In­dies pac­er slammed Hold­er as be­ing too “de­fen­sive mind­ed”, con­tend­ing he need­ed to em­ploy a more ag­gres­sive ap­proach, es­pe­cial­ly when con­di­tions were suit­ed to fast bowl­ing.

“I would like to know how do we judge a cap­tain,” Sir Andy queried.

“Do we judge him by his win-loss record or do we judge him by his per­for­mance on the field or do we judge him on well he in­ter­views?

“I think Ja­son Hold­er as a cap­tain on the field is lost. I don’t think he is aware of what is go­ing on on the field be­cause if I win a toss as a cap­tain and be­fore lunch on a green top pitch I am hav­ing a man on the point bound­ary then I am lost.

“That’s the first thing. His field plac­ing [leaves] a lot to be de­sired and I be­lieve the time should come where he takes in­struc­tions from the coach­es who can see the game bet­ter than he can.”

Not for the first time, Hold­er’s cap­tain­cy was put un­der the mi­cro­scope fol­low­ing last De­cem­ber’s chas­ten­ing two-Test se­ries in New Zealand where West In­dies lost both match­es in­side four days by in­nings mar­gins.

Ear­li­er in 2020, he presided over a 2-1 se­ries de­feat away to Eng­land as West In­dies sur­ren­dered the Wis­den Tro­phy they had re­cap­tured in 2019 for the first time in a decade.

Over­all, Hold­er has led West In­dies in 37 of his 45 Tests but has on­ly won 11 while los­ing 21.

How­ev­er, the 29-year-old re­mains one of the world’s lead­ing per­form­ers in the Test for­mat where he was the top-ranked all-rounder for near­ly a year re­cent­ly.

He is now ranked third in the all-rounders charts, 11th in the bowl­ing rank­ings and 43rd in the bat­ting rank­ings.

While en­dors­ing the Bar­ba­di­an’s re­mark­able abil­i­ty as a crick­eter, Sir Andy said his prowess as a cap­tain need­ed to im­prove.

“A cap­tain is on­ly as good as the men who he leads so there has to be some­thing wrong with the 11 guys on the field and can­not pin­point cer­tain things to the cap­tain,” Sir Andy told Star­com Ra­dio’s Ma­son and Guest crick­et show.

“I would give him an ‘A’ grade for his in­ter­views – he in­ter­views very well. He’s a damn good crick­eter but he needs to be more ag­gres­sive in his ap­proach as a cap­tain. He’s too de­fen­sive mind­ed.”

Sir Andy al­so chid­ed Hold­er for re­cent­ly cit­ing the fa­tigue stem­ming from the bio-se­cure bub­bles as­so­ci­at­ed with tour­ing amid the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Point­ing to the Bar­ba­di­an’s re­cent par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Aus­tralia Big Bash last month and sub­se­quent de­ci­sion to opt out of the Bangladesh tour, Sir Andy said ex­haus­tion for Hold­er and oth­er play­ers could not be used as an ex­cuse.

“I am dis­ap­point­ed with their ex­cus­es be­cause they’re tired of be­ing in the bub­ble but every­where they trav­el [for oth­er T20 tour­na­ments] they go in­to a bub­ble,” said the icon.

“If af­ter he came back from New Zealand and he said he was tired – he played two Test match­es, he bowled a few overs and he came back to the Caribbean to rest – then I wouldn’t have a prob­lem.

“But when you left New Zealand you went to Aus­tralia to bowl 16 overs and to tell me that you’re tired? You’ve got to come bet­ter than that. You have to find bet­ter ex­cus­es than that.”

(CMC)