West Indies all-rounder Jason Holder said he has found transitioning back as a player in the one-day international side tough after being removed as captain in the format for Kieron Pollard.
While Holder remains the skipper in the red-ball format, poor performances since the 2019 World Cup have forced the West Indies board to hand the ODI captaincy to the much experienced Pollard.
“To be quite honest, it has been tough transitioning back just as a player,” Holder told the Cricket Collective podcast on TalkSPORT last week.
“In hindsight, it has been tough trying to understand how to get back in as just a player,” he added.
There hasn’t been a great deal of improvement in his performances since being axed as ODI captain. Since the World Cup, Holder has picked up just seven wickets in ten innings at an average of 69.85 and a strike rate of 75.4. Since Pollard became the captain, Holder has picked up six wickets in eight ODIs at 66.16 with a strike rate of 75. These numbers pale in comparison to his career stats: overall, he has 136 wickets from 111 innings at an average of 36.38 and a strike rate of 39.3.
“Performances obviously haven’t been there as I would’ve probably liked, but I’m not too disheartened,” Holder said.
“I don’t beat myself up. I don’t get too worried because I know my ability. I know what I can produce. I just know that an innings is around the corner, a bowling effort is around the corner,” he added.
Need to spend time at the crease
However, according to the all-rounder, there are more factors to his dip in form, especially with the bat. He has scored just one 50 runs from six ODI innings after being dropped as captain.
“Certain situations haven’t really gone my way in terms of having an extended time to bat in one-day cricket, which I feel personally has contributed to me not having that [big] score. I’m a batsman who needs a little bit of a time to get in and then flourish. And I haven’t had many opportunities to get a solid knock. There hasn’t been much Test cricket going on as well too, which helps me a lot in terms of spending time at the crease,” he said.
Holder has come in at No. 7 in five of those innings in contrast to his last 15 knocks as captain when he had batted at No. 6 or higher 13 times.
The 28-year-old admitted that fatigue could also be hampering his performances having played a lot of cricket over the past year.
“I felt I needed the break after the India series [in December] particularly, just to refresh,” Holder said.
“I had played every single series in the entire year, I played county cricket as well, and my batteries needed a little bit of a recharge. Obviously, I needed some time to go and think about how I wanted to go forward as a player and try to work out again how just to be a player as opposed to being the captain,” he added.
Despite the troubles, Holder remains positive about turning the corner with both bat and ball.
“I’m not too disheartened. I’ve done a lot of thinking, I’ve done a few technical sessions trying to work through a few things that I wanted to correct. I’m in really good spirits. I know the performances will come and I’m just being as patient as I possibly can before that happens,” he said.