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Home advantage.... What home advantage?

I've been waiting to play in front of a home crowd since we qualified for the World Cup.

Now, after my first international game in Bermuda for over four years, I'm starting to think I prefer playing away.

No spectators, nothing but negative remarks and the ball turning square is not what I'd call home field advantage.

I don't need to say too much about the pitch. It wasn't the worst I've played on but 18 wickets in one day sums it up.

We could cope with that to play in front of a home crowd, but there was no crowd - maybe 50 people.

Even for the game against Scotland - which was our first at home in four years - there was not even 100 people there.

Maybe people don't like the longer version of the game. I'm sure the crowd would have been bigger if it was 20-20.

But the bottom line is people just don't support the national programme. People don't support their country.

Negative press

I feel I also have to comment on the negative press.

We've received a lot of stick over the years but the ultimate was Saturday.

The words this guy (The Royal Gazette's Josh Ball) used to describe the team were over the top and flat-out disrespectful.

I can tell you the players would have liked to have got him out on that wicket for ten overs and had use him as a dart board and see what comments he made after that.

Seriously, you expect bad press in sports, particularly when results aren't going your way. But for me that was way overboard. We're still people.

I don't think you would see any other team in the world getting that kind of stick from their home press.

The upside of this is that it really reminds me of where we were four years ago.

The same press was trashing us, we were surrounded by the same negativity but we came through and we qualified for the World Cup.

We have to respond to all this in the right way. We're going to stick together and we're going to fight and we're going to prove people wrong.

The road to requalifying for the World Cup starts now.

We go to Florida in November to try and defend the Americas title and then we've got seven months of hard work ahead of us.

I'm happy with the progress I've seen so far and with some of the younger guys going to Academies and a lot of cricket to be played before we go to the World Cup qualifier I believe we can peak at the right time.

We have the talent. There's no doubt about that.[[In-content Ad]]

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