Bermuda saved their best batting performance of the ICC Americas Division One Twenty20 tournament for Tuesday against Suriname, now they will be looking to carry it on in a must-win clash with the United States in Indianapolis today.

David Hemp and captain Janeiro Tucker, the oldest players in the team, led from the front with unbeaten knocks of 72 and 43 in a third-wicket stand of 92 as Bermuda picked up their first win in the tournament.

That result, combined with Canada’s six-wicket victory over the US, has given Bermuda renewed hopes of qualifying for the World Twenty20 World Cup Qualifiers in Ireland in July.

Now Bermuda must pick up another victory against the US today, Arnold Manders, the Bermuda coach, said.

“We’re taking one game at a time, we felt pretty good after yesterday, did some soul-searching the night before and followed the plan to a tee.

“That’s something we’ve been trying to do from the beginning,” said Manders as the team enjoyed a rest day yesterday.

The US beat Bermuda by five wickets after restricting Bermuda to 123 for seven on Sunday. Manders concedes that not using Stefan Kelly, one of the team’s top bowlers, was a decision that backfired.

“The first game I don’t think we should have lost, but there were a few tactical errors made like not bowling Stefan Kelly,” Manders said.

“Tomorrow [today] is the most important game because we have to win to keep ourselves in it.

“I think we can still qualify with two wins out of [the last] three if we beat the United States.

“I also still think we can beat Canada before our last game against Suriname.”

The groundsman, a New Zealander, has prepared another wicket to be used for the remaining matches, so the teams do not know how it will play. Whoever makes the fewer mistakes will win,” said Manders of the three teams battling for the top two spots for the World Twenty20 Qualifiers.

“We dropped Canada’s highest scorer [Ruvindu Gunasekera] on about 20 and he went on and made 62, so we have to take our chances.

“Our fielding has been extremely good for the most part. I believe [the dropped catch] cost us the match even though we still had a chance when the rain came.

“Scoring 105 off 75 balls, if you do it right you give yourself a chance, but they wanted to go straight from the start and not pick up the singles and put away the bad balls.

“Once we lost a few wickets the writing was on the wall so we tried to save our net run rate, which is now better than the United States’.”

Using the big-hitting James Celestine as an opener did not work in the first two matches, but pushing the experienced Hemp into that spot paid dividends and Manders expects to go with the same team today.

“Justin Pitcher has something similar to tennis elbow so we’re trying to give him as much rest as possible, so we’ll probably name the same team,” he said.

“We’ve worked out the batting line-up, we tried a different plan of putting Celestine up top and score as fast as we can in the powerplay but that didn’t work.

“We decided to push Hemp up and get him to bat through the whole innings and for everybody to bat around him and that worked to a tee.”

Added Manders: “Our spinners are bowling quite well and Stefan Kelly is bowling quite well. I was extremely impressed with Christian Burgess in the first game when his batting helped us to 123 after the top of the order failed.

“We gave that match to them, there’s no way I thought we would lose with them having to score 30-odd in the last three overs. They finished with an over to spare!”

Canada play winless Suriname in today’s second match.