Plans for the Bermuda cricket team to play in the United States as a final preparation for the ICC Men's T20 World Cup Americas Regional Qualifier have been shelved.

Coach Niraj Odedra was eager for his players to take part in some challenging fixtures in Atlanta before they take on Canada, Panama and Cayman Islands on home soil from next Saturday, but he was forced to abandon the idea after Hurricane Lee disrupted the schedule.

Players in the national squad will instead be involved heavily with their clubs as the Athene T20 competition comes to an end this weekend, with the final squad for the World Cup qualifiers expected to be announced on Monday.

“It rained in Atlanta so much that everything has been called off,’’ Odedra said. “If we had travelled there, we would have spent a lot of money and not played a single game, so that would have been really bad.

“There is now not enough time to travel to the US. I can’t risk it so I would rather play matches here.”

Calvin Blankendal, executive director of the Bermuda Cricket Board, said recent storm activity on the island have made it difficult to plan.

“If we had gone last week, we wouldn't have been able to play so it’s a little bit challenging with all of these tropical storms coming around,” Blankendal said.

The coach really wanted this but no one can control the weather. Everything is up in the air because we have to keep monitoring storms, even if they are not in Bermuda they can go somewhere else and if it’s raining over there it doesn't make sense to go.

“It’s difficult but now we’re focused on the games this weekend. The coach wanted the team to play some matches in the US but it’s out of our control, there’s nothing we can do about it.

“Every time we think we know what we’re going to do, there’s another storm coming. If it means we focus on high level matches in Bermuda then so be it. It’s not like the cricket board is in charge of the weather.”

Odedra’s side recently disappointed in the Bermuda Premier League losing twice to eventual champions Barbados, but the coach feels the defeat may have sharpened his and his players’ minds.

“We need to work hard and in the next few days they’ll be working hard on their batting,” Odedra said.

“I’ll try and work hard on what we can do to get things right. The good thing about BPL is that we got to look at where we can improve and how to perform against good sides.

““It’s always nice to look at where you are going wrong. if you keep winning everything then you don’t learn, so you basically learn from your mistakes.

“These two weeks will give us time to look at why we lost that final. We played 52 dot balls in that final and that just adds up to misery.

“We know these are really important matches at the end of the month. I think our players are very smart and they are also putting in a lot of effort and really working hard on their game.

“I think the fielding was amazing but we still need to find out which fielders to use for particular positions.”