Canada captain Saad Zafar has said his team intends to be ruthless as they prepare to take on Bermuda in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup Americas Regional Qualifier.

With the highest ranking of the four teams taking part at nineteenth in the world, Canada head into the tournament as favourites and Pakistani-born Zafar, 36, is eyeing runs as he anticipates net run-rate could have a huge part to play in the round-robin format.

“We’re just focusing on winning every single game,’’ Zafar said.

“We’re making sure that if we’re winning, we don’t take any game lightly and that we’re winning by good margins because it could potentially come down to net run-rate at a certain point. That’s how these tournaments are.

“One game here and there you find you’re at the mercy of net run-rate. We just have to make sure that on the day we do everything correctly and if we win that we win by big margins. If we’re losing we try to reduce the margin of the loss.”

Canada have never been to a T20 World Cup and are eyeing an historic maiden appearance when the tournament takes place in the United States and the West Indies next year.

“None of us in our squad has played in a World Cup,’’ Zafar said.

“The last time Canada made it to a World Cup was 12 years ago in the 50-overs World Cup in 2011.

“It’s each individual player’s dream to play and represent Canada in the World Cup and this is a great opportunity that has been presented to us.

“Before that we used to have regional qualifiers and global qualifiers, it was a long process and the spots were less. I believe this is a great opportunity for us to grab. We’re really taking it seriously and we are really looking forward to that.

“There is obviously pressure to do well on the field and we know that we’re favourites but cricket is played on the day.

“We've to make sure that we play to our potential and take one game at a time and if we’re able to do that we should be able to win the tournament.

While Bermuda’s players stayed on home soil to prepare when taking part in the Bermuda Premier League, Canada’s players were picking up experience in the Global T20 Canada before the team headed off to the United States for some competitive matches.

“We’re coming off our season back home, where everybody was playing club cricket, so everybody was in good touch,” Zafar said.

“We had a pre-tour in Houston as well and we were there for ten days to play some good, competitive cricket. The good thing is that everybody is in good nick and good form. The batsmen are scoring runs and the bowlers are bowling good lines.

“Houston was quite hot and we’re coming to the end of our season in Toronto, where the weather has got a little chilly. Houston is pretty much similar weather to Bermuda so it helped us getting acclimatised. The first couple of days were quite tough but as the week went on we got used to the weather.

“We were able to play some games against clubs as cricket is growing in the US and there

are a lot of clubs that have brought in professional players all over the world, including India, Pakistan and South Africa.

“We pretty much played against teams with ex-IPL players, which I believe will have us prepare for this tournament.”

Zafar is well aware of the importance of the first game of the tournament when his team takes on Bermuda at White Hill Field tomorrow.

“Bermuda is the second-best team and are basically the main competition,” he said.

“We are taking that game very seriously as we understand that Bermuda have the home advantage.

“We haven't been to the ground and we haven't seen the wicket so we still have to assess what the conditions are and how the wicket will play. We will then have to make our plans accordingly as to whether play extra seamers or spinners.

“We’re quite confident but we just have to focus on our strengths rather than focusing on the weak points of the opposition.”