🏠 Why does our team win at home and fall apart everywhere else

I play in a small Sunday cricket group in Jersey City. About 14 of us, mostly from Hyderabad. We have a home ground, a rough patch of grass behind a school, and we almost never lose there. Last month we played on a nice proper ground 40 minutes away and lost by a big margin. Same 11 players, same bats. It felt like we'd never played together. On our own ground we know everything. There's a dip near square leg where the ball slows down. The grass on one side is longer, so we put the weakest fielder there on purpose. The other team didn't know any of this. Their openers kept hitting the ball into that dip and getting stuck. Our captain Anwar looked very pleased with himself, and I won't tell him he's right. My friend Teja thinks it's all in the head. He says confidence matters more than any dip in the ground. He's the kind who gets nervous in away games, and he drops 3 catches every time we travel. I told him that proves my point. He said it proves his. Nobody won that one. We were still arguing in the parking lot while everyone else was loading the cars. There's also the small stuff. We know where the sun comes in the afternoon and which end to avoid. We know the man who walks his dog across the pitch at 3, and we wait for him. I don't know if commentators are right about the crowd. We don't even have a crowd. Does this happen to your team too, or is my club just odd?

Our club ground has a slope, and every visiting team complains about it within 10 minutes. We adjust our stance without even thinking.

I'd add weather. A visiting team once struggled with the humidity during a match at our ground. We never noticed it, because we'd played in that heat every season without anyone thinking about it. Their bowler kept stopping to wipe his hands, and his run up got shorter each over. It had nothing to do with noise. It was only that we were used to it.

Home ground is real for me. I played on one ground for years and we barely ever lost. Then I changed cities and the same group of players lost the advantage almost overnight. It was the uneven patches and the odd bounce, nothing to do with the crowd. Your dip near square leg is exactly that kind of thing. Keep it secret from other teams.