As much as I try to encourage positive thoughts about our national sport, it is impossible to advocate for more support when only three out of seven games were played last weekend.Player unavailability and a shortage of umpires is a condition that is plaguing our game. Teams are also refusing to play without umpires to prevent incidents such as what transpired at the Flatts and Western Stars game.With the Bermuda Cricket Board about to have a Regional Tournament this weekend what should we expect? The million dollar question is what is the BCB prepared to do?The fact of the matter is that fewer and fewer players are playing cricket period, leaving several teams, even some top teams struggling to field 11 players for a game.With the league set up to play both Saturdays and Sundays, teams are finding it near impossible to field a team on both days, as work commitments, lack of junior players, and the absence of love for the game is causing more than just a hindrance, killing the game slowly.This slow death has no chance of going into remission if we continue to fail to have umpires for the game. Last week two of the four games that didn’t get played were due solely because of the on-going umpire shortage. The First Division particularly has been hit the hardest having to find their own officials in order to play. The BCB have said that no games shall be replayed and that clubs were responsible for finding their own umpires if there was a shortage. A game would only be rescheduled because of exceptional circumstances, and exceptional is determined by the board.In the off-season former BCB, vice-president, Allen Richardson met with clubs, umpires and interested cricket lovers to discuss the way forward and how to address and rectify the umpire shortage situation.It was brought to the table by umpires that each club should list two names as perspective people who could do square leg and would be willing to be trained and in turn they would be more than happy to send one umpire to the game.However, this apparently fell on deaf ears and clubs have failed to adhere to their request. So once again a good idea that was not followed through, hence the reason we are still in this predicament with a shortage of umpires.This weekend the BCB are about to host a Regional Tournament with the Eastern, Western, Central zones and Cup Match teams, an innovative tournament, which theoretically should see the return of huge crowds. However, several big name players have withdrawn and indicated that they are unavailable.Some players are disgruntled with the current national squad captaincy situation that has lingered on and on, again with no action, just promises that again appear to be empty. While other players simply are not interested after last year’s tournament didn’t really live up to the expectations and was a shadow of the standards that was expected.So the big question is what is the BCB prepared to do to sort this dilemma out? Really and truly after last weekend’s fiasco, along with previous week’s issues why hasn’t the BCB called an emergency meeting with club officials, coaches, umpires and captains to discuss the current state of the game?It is one thing to have administrators running cricket, but we need more hands on people to get into the trenches, and actually implement things that can inspire, improve, and develop our cricket and cricketers. The BCB have a payroll and running cricket should include improvements and development, not just scheduling matches and running meetings.