Holder fit, but not selected

Roland Holder was fit and available for the Test series on the West Indies tour of India in 1994 but simply not selected. The former middle-order batsman explained yesterday that a cut to the mouth, sustained while shaving a few days before the team left the West Indies, prevented him from playing only for the first week of the tour.

It did not virtually put him out of contention for the three Tests,. as I reported yesterday in comparing Holder's situation with that of left-handed batsman Wavell Hinds, who is unable to join the West Indies tour of Sri Lanka until next week, six days after the team's arrival. It means Hinds will miss the first three-day match and has only a day on the ground before the second warm-up match before the three back-to-back Tests.

Holder said he played his first match, a One-Day International on October 30, two-and-a-half weeks after the team's arrival and well ahead of the first Test on November 18.

It was a tour dominated by One-Day Internationals and there were only two first-class matches. Holder wasn't selected for the first and although he played in the second, it was abandoned after one day because of political disturbances. It didn't give him much of a chance of pressing for a Test place but he did play in six of the ten One-Day Internationals.