We have considered Kantowski–Sachs space–time in the presence of matter and anisotropic modified holographic Ricci dark energy components in the scalar–tensor theory of gravitation formulated by Saez and Ballester (Phys. Lett. A, 113, 467, 1986) and derived the field equations of the theory. We have used (i) hybrid expansion law proposed by Akarsu et al. (JCAP, 022, 2014), (ii) a relation between metric potentials, and (iii) modified holographic Ricci dark energy density given by Chen and Jing (Phys. Lett. B, 679, 144, 2009) to obtain an exact solution of the field equations that describes a Kantowski–Sachs holographic modified Ricci dark energy universe in this theory. Physical and kinematical parameters are also computed and their physical behavior is discussed.