Holder first West Indies all-rounder since Sobers to top ICC rankings

Holder tops ICC's all-rounder rankings following his superb display against England in Barbados.

LONDON (AFP) - Jason Holder has become the first West Indian since cricket great Garfield Sobers to be named as the world s leading all-rounder following his superb display against England in Barbados.

West Indies captain Holder struck a commanding 202 not out and also took two useful first-innings wickets on his Kensington Oval home ground in Bridgetown, Barbados to help his side complete a crushing 381-run win over England in the first Test.

Victory, secured with more than a day to spare, put the West Indies 1-0 up in a three-Test series.

The towering Holder s man-of-the-match display saw him go ahead of Bangladesh s Shakib-al-Hasan and India s Ravindra Jadeja in the International Cricket Council s all-rounder rankings, with England s Ben Stokes still in fourth place.

Although the rankings, which aim to take into account the quality of the opposition as well as a player s raw figures, did not exist when Sobers was still playing, they have since been applied retrospectively to generations of former cricketers.

Under that system Sobers -- widely considered to be the best player cricket has known -- last topped the rankings in 1974, the year of his retirement.

Sobers made a cap presentation just before the first Test started, with the 82-year-old witnessing the impressive display of Holder, a fellow Bajan.

Meanwhile West Indies chief executive Johnny Grave criticised what he said was a lack of respect shown to his side by former England captains Geoffrey Boycott and Andrew Flintoff.

Boycott, in a pre-series newspaper column, labelled the West Indies as "very ordinary, very average cricketers" while Flintoff, like Holder a pace-bowling all-rounder, tweeted his disbelief at the Caribbean skipper s double century.

Grave, an Englishman who made his reputation in cricket administration with Surrey and the Professional Cricketers  Association, was decidedly unimpressed.

"Former players have said some stuff I think is unwarranted and borderline disrespectful," Grave told BBC Radio s Test Match Special.

"I saw Andrew Flintoff say he can t believe Jason Holder got a double hundred, yet I think Jason Holder is a fantastic cricketer and has been performing so fantastically over the last 18 months -- a brilliant captain.

"Criticism of our players and suggestions that they re not world-class is unfair. It doesn t seem to happen when England play other opposition. I think it s unwarranted and not true.

"I m hoping everyone gets to see that in the next few weeks of this series."