Jason Holder proved once again why he is the No 1 all-rounder in world cricket
There was just a hint of a Test match slipping away. West Indies’ remorseless bowling before lunch had given way to more wayward fare.
Twice West Indies had set up Ben Stokes; twice, they had spilt chances international cricketers would expect to take. Stokes and Jos Buttler were adding brisk runs.
At this point Jason Holder, West Indies captain, could be seen urging his team to maintain their intensity. “It was a pivotal moment then because they were starting to score,” Holder said. “We weren’t disciplined enough after the lunch break. And I just wanted the guys to get back on it.”
Four overs later, Holder took the role upon himself, bringing himself back into the attack. His plan to Stokes was simple. “I just wanted to be really consistent to him. He was really settled and countering the line we were bowling. But I was getting just enough movement to keep him at bay, keep him playing.”
His fourth ball back elicited an edge from Jos Buttler, which went through the slips. But his ninth, from around the wicket, kissed Stokes’s outside edge, terminating the most dangerous partnership of England’s innings. In his next over, Holder found late movement to snare Buttler too.
From risking frittering away their advantage, now West Indies were in the ascendant. Not long afterwards, Holder led his team off the field with Test best figures of six for 42 from 20 overs.
In the mid-1980s, international cricket had the greatest assemblage of all-rounders the sport has seen, with Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev and Richard Hadlee all vying for the title of the best.
The build-up to this series has almost recalled those days. With Stokes captaining England for the first time, the sides are led by the best and second-best all-rounders in the world. Except the ranking of these two runs counter to the common perception.
“Ben has always been talked up and quite rightfully so, he’s a really good cricketer,” Holder said this week. “But the rankings say that I’m the No 1 ranked all-rounder and maybe I don’t get as much credit as probably I deserve, who knows?”
Part of the rationale is the notion that Stokes is a better big-game performer. But consider Holder’s preparations in West Indies’ intra-squad games before this Test. While battling an ankle injury, Holder bowled only five overs and scored seven runs in three innings.
Come the test that mattered, Holder was ready. Again. This was his third defining contribution to the first Test of an England-West Indies series, to go with his match-saving 103 not out in 2015 and 202 not out in the first Test of 2019. Stokes’s big-match pedigree is not in doubt – but neither is Holder’s.
And in recent years Holder’s consistency exceeds even Stokes’s. Since the start of 2018, Holder has 680 runs at 42.50 apiece to go with his 59 wickets at just 13.49, the reward for pitching the ball up more to bring the stumps into play, then trusting in his swing and seam to do the rest. This is a 30-month body of work that any of those great 1980s all-rounders would gladly have claimed as their own. Perhaps the interesting question, then, is why Holder still weighs some way lighter than Stokes in popular perception. The answer illuminates many regrettable aspects of modern cricket.
Since the start of 2018, during Holder’s astounding all-round run, West Indies have played only 16 Tests. England have played 29 – and, had they not left Sri Lanka prematurely due to Covid-19, it would have been 31.
Even the Tests that West Indies do play tend to be in two-match series, denying Holder a chance to shape a broader narrative. That Stokes is hailed as a big-game performer without peer is partly because he gets to play more big games.
The same argument can be applied to New Zealand’s Tom Latham, unobtrusively one of the best opening batsmen in the world; Bangladesh’s wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim, who averages 51 in six Tests against India; and Holder’s team-mate Kemar Roach.
For all their consistent excellence, the barrier between these men and wider acclaim is the same. However good you are as a West Indies or New Zealand Test cricketer – or really, anywhere other that Australia, England and India – economics mean you do not get to play much Test cricket.
Holder himself has suggested some of the best solutions. A minimum wage for Test cricket, which he has advocated, would ensure that, when their countries do play, players would not be better off playing domestic cricket elsewhere.
Add it to a World Test Championship, or a Test World Cup worthy of the name and the sport would not allow the No 1 Test all-rounder to be a titan hiding in plain sight.
