Bermuda cricket coach Cal Waldron is expecting his players to show hunger when they compete in the North American Cup, which begins on Saturday in Cayman Islands.

With the five-team tournament providing crucial preparation for the ICC T20 World Cup Americas regional final in June, Waldron expects the players to give a good account of themselves.

“We are looking to go down there and be a competitive unit,” Waldron said.

“We have to sort out some things and have a look at people to make sure that we've got the right personnel.

“We don’t want to go there and just say it’s a tournament. There’s a short window until June to get ready for the qualifiers.

“All the players are on board, they understand what we’re trying to accomplish and they’re in a jovial mood.”

While the team has been training since the beginning of the year, Waldron highlighted that they were hampered by not having unlimited access to an indoor facility. As a result, most of their time together has been spent going through strategies.

“Our preparations haven't been the best,’’ the coach said. “We don’t have the outdoor facilities at this time of the year, unfortunately. The cricket board doesn't have indoor space that we can use all the time.

“This time around we did a lot of talking — how we’re going to approach the game and what we’re looking to do, as opposed to physically going through the skillset.”

After playing warm-up matches against Cayman A and a Cayman President’s XI today and tomorrow, respectively, the real action comes thick and fast for Bermuda.

First up is a tough encounter with Canada on Saturday, with the host nation awaiting 24 hours later. It gets harder for Waldron’s side on Monday, as they square off with the United States, before they meet Bahamas 48 hours later.

With one of the teams to be eliminated at the end of the preliminary round of fixtures, the semi-finals are scheduled to be played on April 26, a day before the final.

“We’re not taking for granted what happened in Argentina,” Waldron said.

“I think everybody is going to approach this tournament totally differently. It would be good for Cayman and Bahamas to come to say they’re better than they were in Argentina.

“For us, we have to prove that we were just as good as we were there. We won it rightfully, so we deserve to be among the region’s best.

“We also get to have a look at Canada and the US, who are going through a transition period with the players they have selected. We want to be able to compete with those two teams to gauge our preparedness, and where we need to be come June as we try to qualify for the World Cup.

“We want to be in the final and if not, we have to look at what prevented us from getting there so that we can fix it moving forward.”

Meanwhile, the new selection committee, which assumed duties in March, has made an undertaking to watch as much cricket as possible. Chaired by Norbert Simons, the panel has Darren Burchall, former Bermuda bowler Ryan Steede, Derek Wright, working with Waldron and captain Terryn Fray.

“As the current selection committee, we've made a commitment to attend games,” Burchall said.

“The aim is to accumulate a group of players that have an interest in playing for Bermuda, that is the most important part. We have a good set of players led by Terryn; we now need to look at players on the fringe.

“We have to cast the net again, have some type of combine where we get players of interest coming out for a few days. Have some type of training camp to have a look at these players.

“We need to look at players that are not normally looked at. There are lots of talented players that are dealing with social issues, so I think we need to use cricket as an avenue to heal some of those issues.”