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The loss of Delyone Borden from our World Cup qualifying squad is a huge blow.

In my view he is as valuable to our team as Shane Warne was to Australia or Muttiah Muralitharan to Sri Lanka.

I believe he has been our top spinner over the past 18 months and it will be doubly hard to qualify without him in the team.

The decision not to select him because of the issues on the recent tour is very disappointing.

There is much more to the story than people know and I am sure the truth will eventually come out.

In my experience Delyone is a player that has always given 100 per cent and I would ask people not to judge him too harshly.

He obviously has to take his share of the blame and maybe he should have handled the situation differently.

This is the third time I have been with him on tour and his pay has not come through.

Not the first time

It happened at the World Cup in 2007 and again at the Americas Championship in Florida last year.

Maybe he should have taken the higher ground and played on, but everybody has a breaking point.

I know he was offered an advance by the board but I think by that point the damage had already been done.

Everybody could see that he was down and was in no mood to play cricket. He didn't walk off the pitch in the middle of a game, he asked to be substituted because he was not in the mood to play.

I'm not excusing that, but I understand where he is coming from. He felt let down and he was not in the right frame of mind to play.

Everyone has to take a share of the blame in this, including Delyone. But the worst thing about it is that this could have been avoided if things had been handled properly from the start.

We've been contracting players for four years now and it's a shame to lose a player on the eve of one of the biggest tournaments in our history because of something like this.

I hope that Delyone bounces back. He's always shown a good attitude in the past and I think it would be unfair to judge him solely on the basis of what has happened over the past few weeks.

As a team we now have to put this behind us and concentrate on the job of qualifying for the World Cup.

Talented squad

I believe this is one of the most talented Bermuda squads that I've been a part of.

But I don't think we yet have the togetherness that we did in Ireland in 2005.

That squad was like a family and it was that closeness that helped us to qualify.

There are a few cliques in this squad right now and I believe we need to pull together in the next few weeks and remember that we all have a common goal and we need to work for each other to achieve it.

If everybody comes together and we play with the heart and harmony that we did last time then we will qualify for the World Cup.

Divided we are nothing, but together we can achieve anything because unity is strength.

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