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Somebody has to come out and tell those responsible that they are, really and truly, hurting West Indies cricket, Rudolph Greenidge said Thursday night.

And that is precisely what the Minister of Sport did on the eve of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) annual general meeting at the Accra Hotel, Rockley, Christ Christ, at which, he said, only God knows what is going to happen.

Speaking on VOB's State of the Game programme, Greenidge said several ministers at the recent meeting of CARICOM Sports Ministers in Barbados, had expressed their displeasure with what is going on with the West Indies Cricket Board and with our cricket in general.

I guess as ministers of sport we do not want to intrude into the affairs of the West Indies Cricket Board but I think someone has to come out and say that West Indies cricket is indeed bigger than the board, he said. It is about our Caribbean people.

He said that, as the West Indies are consistently outplayed by their opponents, reasons such as lack of cohesion, fitness and mental toughness were identified as some of the problems we have to deal with.

But he placed much of the blame squarely on the WICB.

Now that it (criticism) is raining heavily on our cricketers, the board appears to be taking the roof off our cricket, he said, referring to several changes and dismissals made by WICB.

We are being made the laughing stock of cricket around the world, he added.

The point is we can ill-afford any type of upheaval at the level of the board at a stage when our cricket is at its weakest ever.

This type of disruption will have a further consequential negative impact on the players, on their cricket and on our pride as a cricketing nation, Greenidge added.

In the past two years, the WICB has changed captains and coaches twice, the manager once and its chief executive once. It has also made director of coaching Reg Scarlett and secretary Andrew Sealy redundant in restructuring of its operations.

© The Barbados Nation