BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Leg­endary fast bowler Michael Hold­ing has giv­en a thumbs up to some of the ini­tial moves made by the new Ricky Sker­ritt-led Crick­et West In­dies ad­min­is­tra­tion, and be­lieves one of the ma­jor achieve­ments so far is the re­newed com­mit­ment by play­ers to rep­re­sent the em­bat­tled re­gion­al side.

Point­ing out he was “ex­treme­ly hap­py” when Sker­ritt top­pled three-term in­cum­bent Dave Cameron in elec­tions a year ago, Hold­ing said the new ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­peared head­ed in the right di­rec­tion but now need­ed to en­sure the ear­ly work paid off.

“I am hap­py with a lot of things that I heard are be­ing done,” Hold­ing told Star­com Ra­dio’s Ma­son and Guest on Tues­day.

Michael Hold­ing.

“I’m not that close to know what has tak­en place but the dif­fer­ent com­mit­tees that I heard were set up and the ac­tions that these com­mit­tees are sup­posed to be tak­ing I am hap­py in that re­gard. Let’s see if all this now comes to fruition.”

He added: “An­oth­er as­pect of this en­tire thing that I’m hap­py with is that … crick­eters are now look­ing for­ward to rep­re­sent­ing West In­dies again – every­body is now mak­ing them­selves avail­able again which is im­por­tant.

“If you don’t have a huge pool from which to draw, you’re go­ing to have medi­oc­rity get­ting to the top and if you have more com­pe­ti­tion at the low­er lev­el and every­one fight­ing to be in the last 11, the cream will rise to the top.

“This is what you want in the Caribbean – every­one want­i­ng to play for West In­dies.”

Hold­ing said one of the signs of suc­cess would be West In­dies’ per­for­mances on the field, es­pe­cial­ly in Tests and One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als.

The 66-year-old, now a re­spect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al tele­vi­sion crick­et an­a­lyst, said spe­cial at­ten­tion need­ed to be giv­en to the longer form of the game as it de­vel­oped the char­ac­ter re­quired in play­ers to con­tribute to the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment fol­low­ing their play­ing ca­reers.

“What I want to see is West In­dies get­ting back to be­ing high­ly com­pet­i­tive at Test lev­el and One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al crick­et. [In] Tests es­pe­cial­ly be­cause that is the true test of some­one’s char­ac­ter and we want that in the Caribbean,” said Hold­ing, who snatched 249 wick­ets in 60 Tests be­tween 1975 and 1987.

“We just don’t want crick­eters, we want to be build­ing peo­ple of sub­stance in the Caribbean so af­ter their crick­et­ing ca­reers, they can go on to oth­er things that will ben­e­fit the Caribbean.

“You don’t want some­body to re­tire at 35 and that is the end of their ben­e­fit to the West In­dies, you must be able to do oth­er things so that the re­gion can con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from you. At the end of that, we want to be able to build peo­ple who can go on and I think Test crick­et con­tributes to that.”

West In­dies have con­tin­ued to strug­gle in both the Test and ODI for­mats where they are cur­rent­ly ranked eighth and ninth re­spec­tive­ly.

(CMC)