FORMER West Indies batting legend Sir Viv Richards believes the inclusion of the experienced Jamaican duo of Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels could provide needed support for team captain Jason Holder ahead of the England tour.

Samuels and Gayle have been returned to the squad following an amnesty of sorts for the region’s senior players, which once again makes them eligible for selection having previously been made ineligible due to stringent regulations.
Richards, while hinting that the availability of key players could have been of great use to the team and Holder in recent struggles, hailed the move as a step in the right direction.
Despite showing signs of promise, Holder, the 25-year-old Barbadian, has at times come in for heavy criticism – a fact Richards believes could be attributed to a lack of experience around him.
“It’s pretty tough for you to get things right at all times and that is where, sometimes, I think you need some of the more professional folks in the room; folks who would have gotten the experience at the higher level to give the sort of information, and that’s the time where I think he would have had a letdown because of the lack of information,” Richards told the Antigua Observer.
“One has got to remember as well that he is very inexperienced and his performances as captain haven’t quite warranted him, in a sense, to be that dominant, to say the things and to do the things aggressively when you are performing as a captain,” he added.
“Chris has been pretty phenomenal. Anyone who can score 10 000 runs at the T20 level is someone very special. He is one of the West Indian greats in that sense, Marlon Samuels being also experienced.
“There have been some problems but I just believe that there are times when you hear people speak about better late than never, but I don’t think it works in this particular situation but it’s nice that they are back.
“I think it’s just a sort of dressing and it could be the kind of send-off that I think Chris Gayle deserves.”