Escalating anti-social behaviour in cricket is having a detrimental affect on Bermuda Cricket Umpires Association’s (BCUA) efforts to recruit new members.Association secretary Richard Austin says potential members are discouraged from joining because of the abuse cricket umpires are subjected to while carrying out their duties.“We have invited a lot of players going out of the game in the last two years or so to join our ranks but their first comments are ‘not me, I’m not putting up with that behaviour’,” Austin said. “The sun and long hours are not even an issue these days ... it’s just the players’ behaviour.”Austin said his Association’s biggest concern is the lack of umpires. The BCUA currently have 14 active umpires on their roster who from time-to-time are unable to officiate matches because of work and personal commitments.Austin said as many as five of his Association’s members were unavailable on the opening weekend of the 2012 season to due to conflicting commitments. The First Division match involving Western Stars and Flatts that was abandoned at St John’s Field after a brawl broke out between opposing players had no official umpires at all.Austin said ongoing efforts to bolster the BCUA’s membership have been met with little success.“Through the Bermuda Cricket Board (BCB) we tell the clubs to send a couple of people who they think are capable of standing as umpires to us and we will give them necessary training,” he added. “People like Roger Dill and Steven Douglas receive the latest ICC umpiring modules so it’s no big deal for us to get people up and running.“But the thing is to get them to come in and we want them to come in from the clubs in particular. If they are not coming in from the clubs then the limited numbers we have are not going to suffice to cover every game every weekend because the reality of our situation is quite a number of our members that are police officers work shifts.“We also have people that are IT technicians and stuff and a lot of them are on call also. Then you have to factor in things like personal commitments and stuff and this is what we found last weekend where we had umpires unavailable because five of them were off the Island.“Even if people don’t want to umpire on a full-time basis at least let’s get them out there where we know if they have to stand in where there are no official umpire they are capable no matter what they are doing and have some confidence.”Earlier this week Austin called for measures to be put in place to curb anti-social behaviour in cricket which he said will no longer be tolerated by the BCUA.Last season saw umpires take the drastic step of abandoning games if they felt the safety of players, fans and officials were at risk. And, should the need arise, Austin said BCUA members won’t hesitate to take similar action again.“It’s not a policy decision that we will just up and say if X happens we will do Y,” he said. “But one thing for sure we are not going to be exposing our umpires to any stupid acts of violence from players, fans and anybody like that. And if we have to take steps like we did last year our umpires are quite capable and prepared to do it (abandon games).“Clubs need to make sure they have officials there that can monitor and deal with any stupid behaviour whether it’s players or spectators because you must have a certain standard in place.”