LON­DON – West In­dies all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er has joined new­ly-pro­mot­ed Worces­ter­shire for the open­ing five match­es of the Di­vi­sion One coun­ty cam­paign.

The 32-year-old, a for­mer West In­dies Test and One-Day cap­tain, will fea­ture in the open­er against War­wick­shire at Edg­bas­ton next Fri­day, and will al­so be avail­able for fix­tures against Durham, Som­er­set, Not­ting­hamshire and Kent.

Hold­er has fea­tured in the last two games of the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship for his na­tive Bar­ba­dos Pride, scor­ing 110 runs from three in­nings in two games and tak­ing 11 wick­ets with his medi­um pace.

“I al­ways en­joy my time in Eng­land and I’m look­ing for­ward to help­ing Worces­ter­shire get off to a good start to life in Di­vi­sion One of the Coun­ty Cham­pi­onship,” said Hold­er, whose on­ly pre­vi­ous coun­ty stint came in 2019 when he turned out in two games for Northamp­ton­shire.

“I know Worces­ter­shire have had strong links with the West In­dies in terms of play­ers play­ing for them over many years and I hope I can make my mark over the five games.

“When you get pro­mot­ed, if you can make a de­cent start it gives you that con­fi­dence and be­lief to build up­on for the rest of the sea­son.

“You speak to peo­ple on the cir­cuit and they said Worces­ter­shire have a tight knit but friend­ly dress­ing room and I’m look­ing for­ward to play­ing my part on and off the field.”

Worces­ter­shire fin­ished sec­ond to Durham in Di­vi­sion Two last sea­son to earn pro­mo­tion, and chief ex­ec­u­tive Ash­ley Giles said Hold­er would be “a big pres­ence” in nav­i­gat­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of Di­vi­sion One.

“I’m ab­solute­ly de­light­ed. When some­one of Ja­son’s ex­pe­ri­ence and qual­i­ty be­comes avail­able, even for a short win­dow, we just had to jump at it,” Giles said.

“We know on the field as a crick­eter he is a world class all-rounder but off the field a world class in­di­vid­ual as well.

“We are al­so aware that start­ing the sea­son well is go­ing to be im­por­tant to us and hav­ing him in our line-up can on­ly help that.

“Just hav­ing some­one of his qual­i­ty when you take to the field gives you a big lift.”

He con­tin­ued: “You are back in Di­vi­sion One, you know it’s go­ing to be tough, and you can on­ly be bet­ter if you’ve got Ja­son Hold­er in that line-up. He has a big pres­ence.”

Hold­er has scored 2797 runs at an av­er­age of 29 and tak­en 157 wick­ets at 29 from 64 Tests.

He raised eye­brows last De­cem­ber when he snubbed Crick­et West In­dies’ of­fer of a cen­tral con­tract and then al­so opt­ed out of the two-Test tour of Aus­tralia in Jan­u­ary, CWI say­ing he had “ex­pressed a pref­er­ence to ex­plore T20 fran­chise op­por­tu­ni­ties in Jan­u­ary.”

Hold­er fea­tured in the ILT20 and the Bangladesh Pre­mier League at the start of the year but was went un­sold in the In­di­an Pre­mier League.

CMC