Bermuda has become ?the victim of its own success? when it comes to the chronic umpire shortage currently affecting local cricket.

That was the assessment of the Bermuda Cricket Board?s Neil Speight yesterday, who was speaking for the first time about a problem which saw only five umpires make themselves available for last weekend?s matches ? leaving two out of the four Premier Division fixtures without officials.

And the last round of limited over league fixtures this Sunday will be similarly affected, with nine umpires currently overseas.

Four of them ? the Island?s top man Roger Dill and those on the region?s elite panel Randy Butler, George Francis and Stephen Douglas ? are all in Canada ahead of their involvement in the Americas Championship.

Four of the eight league games being played will be without umpires, while there will only be one umpire standing in the rest ? meaning a member of the batting team will be required to fill in at square leg.

?The fact is that we do not have 16 umpires in Bermuda so when we have a full schedule of matches in both leagues we do not have sufficient numbers to have two per-match,? Speight said.

?To a certain extent we have become victims of our own success in that because of the money invested in cricket, there are now a wealth of opportunities that have opened up for our umpires in terms of training and overseas exposure.

?Roger Dill spends more time out of Bermuda than he does in while we have provided lots of opportunities for local umpires to go abroad to seminars and to take courses.

?We?ve also allowed some umpires to travel as part of the national team. We sent George Francis to Dubai and Wilbur Pitcher went to the UK and Guernsey. So there?s plenty going on in terms of the development of umpires in Bermuda and we hope that by being made aware of some of things we?re doing to improve the overall standard that more people will be persuaded to get involved. We certainly need more.?

The rift between the Bermuda Cricket Umpires? Association and the Cup Match clubs over the controversial classic snub has still not been resolved ? but Speight insisted the BCB would do all that they could to calm the waters.

?We had a meeting with the umpires last week and everything that came out of that was positive,? he said.

?We have worked with them very closely in the past and that will continue. They did want to address the Cup Match issue and I think it?s testament to their maturity as an organisation that they were keen to focus on 2007.

?If there is a problem between the umpires and the clubs then obviously we will help where we can. The Board played a strong role in Cup Match this year. We are the leaders of cricket in Bermuda and if there is a party that wants help then we are here to do just that.?