DUBAI–For­mer West In­dies cap­tain Bri­an Lara has backed young Test cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er to be­come "an awe­some leader" but be­lieves he first re­quires the full sup­port of the West In­dies Crick­et Board.Hold­er be­came West In­dies' youngest ever Test cap­tain at age 23 when he was ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion last Sep­tem­ber, ahead of the tour of Sri Lan­ka.

And while re­sults have hard­ly been flat­ter­ing, Lara said Hold­er need­ed the trust of his em­ploy­ers in or­der to suc­ceed."I think Ja­son could be an awe­some cap­tain and an awe­some leader. He first of all has the abil­i­ty to be in a team which is very im­por­tant," said Lara, who led West In­dies in 47 of his 131 Tests.

"It is al­so very im­por­tant that if you en­trust a 23 or 24-year-old with the job of cap­tain­ing the West In­dies team, you have to make sure that you give him the sup­port that is nec­es­sary. He has to have the con­fi­dence that he will be there for [an ex­tend­ed] pe­ri­od of time.

"If his per­for­mances are go­ing to be judged too harsh­ly then that does not make sense, as he doesn't have the ex­pe­ri­ence to do the job [at the mo­ment]."

West In­dies lost both Tests away to Sri Lan­ka and were sound­ly beat­en 2-0 in the sub­se­quent three-Test se­ries against Aus­tralia Down Un­der.The Caribbean side have won just one of their last ten Tests–a shock five-wick­et win over Eng­land last May at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos.

Lara, West In­dies' all-time lead­ing run-scor­er with 11 953 runs, blamed the WICB for the re­gion­al side's marked de­cline in world crick­et.

"We have got a lot of things wrong in West In­dies crick­et. I be­lieve that ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly we haven't been do­ing the right thing. There is not ef­fort be­ing made to cre­ate a prop­er acad­e­my for our young­sters," the 46-year-old lament­ed.

"The West In­dies Crick­et Board re­al­ly hasn't grasped what is nec­es­sary and un­for­tu­nate­ly we are lin­ger­ing at the bot­tom of world crick­et."

Hold­er is al­so the West In­dies one-day cap­tain and led the side at the Crick­et World Cup in Aus­tralia and New Zealand last Feb­ru­ary.

CMC