Only five umpires were available for last weekend?s limited over league games ? leaving three out of the eight matches, including the Premier Division title decider, without officials.

While the relationship between the Cup Match clubs and the Bermuda Umpires Association is still decidedly cool, umpires spokesman Randy Butler was at pains to stress yesterday that they were not on strike as a result of the high-profile row.

?I cannot say for sure what exactly happened until we have had our meeting on Tuesday night,? he said.

?But what I do know is that we are not on strike or anything like that. We still feel the Cup Match issue is not fully resolved but that has nothing to do with what happened on the weekend. There are quite a few guys away and one or two others not available for various reasons.

?It?s a shortage, plain and simple. We?ve often talked about the problems we?ve had recruiting people to do the job and when a few people are unavailable for whatever reasons, this sort of thing tends to happen. And this coming weekend is unfortunately going to be worse because three more of us are going overseas to an umpires? seminar.?

The Bermuda Cricket Board have confirmed that only five umpires ? George Francis, Stephen Douglas, Chris Ray, Kent Gibbons and Richard Burrows ? made themselves available for the full schedule of matches on Sunday, which meant that two out of the four Premier Division games were umpired by unqualified individuals.

According to the BCB?s weekly umpires list ? which unusually was not sent to for publication last Wednesday ? Ray was due to stand in the Somerset-Southampton Rangers game at Somerset Cricket Club, though Rangers were ultimately forced to seal the Premier Division crown with no umpire present.

Warwick and Flatts were also without umpires at Southampton Oval while in the First Division, the rained-out game between Devonshire Rec. and Willow Cuts was similarly affected.

Figures released by the governing body revealed that seven BCUA members were overseas on the weekend while three had ruled themselves out due to work commitments ? leaving only five to meet the demand.

Attempts to uncover what steps the BCB have taken or are going to take to deal with this latest shortage and the problem of insufficient umpires more generally were unsuccessful yesterday as repeated calls were not returned by Press time.