Nick Kyme has a date with destiny today when he squares up against world number one and Commonwealth Games gold medal hopeful Peter Nicol.

Kyme earned the right to face the England star after seeing off Papua New Guinea's Damien Tam in straight games, 9-3, 9-0, 9-3 at the National Squash Centre in Manchester yesterday.

The Bermudian was simply too strong for his rival on Court Seven, where he was watched by mother Denise, Sports Minister Randy Horton and the president of the Island's Olympic Association John Hoskins.

Nicol, though, is a completely different proposition. Formerly a member of the Scottish team he 'defected' to England and will prove a formidable opponent for the young Bermudian.

Kyme has played competitively against Nicol before, losing 'pretty convincingly' 3-0 a couple of years ago. However, he believes he has improved a lot since.

"I have a come on but I am still not sure if I can make a dent into him," he said. "It's really a question of training with the top guys all the time and being on the tour. If you train with them you don't think of them as sort of gods. You know exactly what they do and you don't go on court already defeated. It's a question of getting over that major step."

Kyme said he had immense respect for his opponent.

"He is the world number one, has been around a while and has won all the tournaments. You watch him play and as you're growing up you want to play like he does because he plays textbook squash. Kids are taught to play like he does."

However, when he steps out today Kyme says Nicol will become just like any other opponent.

"When you are on court you try not to think about who it is," he said. "You worry about where the ball is. I will have to play extremely well to keep it close but you never know."

Kyme said given the opportunity of playing an also-ran or a player at the top of his profession he would take the latter. "I love playing those top guys just because you learn so much," he said. "You may not realise it but you come off learning a lot.

"Your game also goes up a little whereas playing someone like I played today was within my level. When you are forced to play up you do and it improves you. If I can keep my head and let the nerves disappear I think it will do wonders for my game."

Kyme admitted to being nervous when he began his match against Tam yesterday. "I had asked and nobody knew who he was so I couldn't get a description of who he was or anything," he said. "I was kind of nervous to see what he played like, who he was even. I didn't know what game plan to go on with.

"For the first few points I was trying to work out what he did, finding out he was left handed and things like that."

Kyme said a key moment was winning the first game. "It was extremely important. It was a big mind lift as it's a mental game. Getting that under my belt was huge and helped me get through the next couple of games without a thought.

"I got more relaxed, loosened up a little and was able to hit more shots - the shots I wanted to play as opposed to boring class squash that doesn't win you matches all the time.

"As long as I continued to play the way I wanted to play, attacking squash, I figured I could definitely take him."

And he did. But today, as they say, is a whole new ball game.

Bermuda's other squash representative at the Games, Tommy Sherratt, went down fighting last night, losing 3-0 in the first round of the men's singles to Sahid Zaman Khan of Pakistan.

Khan is ranked 24 in the world and seeded 15th at the Games and simply had too much in his armoury for the young Islander.

Sherratt took a 2-0 lead in the opening game but it was a false dawn as Khan overhauled him to take it 9-3.

The second also went the way of the Pakistani player, this time 9-1, but Sherratt proved he was not overawed by the occasion by upping his game in the third.

He lost it 9-5 and subsequently the match, but was able to find a number of winners that had Khan swatting at thin air.

"I really enjoyed that," said Sherratt afterwards, far from disappointed with his performance. "I went out thinking I was going to go for a lot of low percentage shots but I didn't really end up doing that.

"I just tried working him around the court and he made some mistakes from the back - I just couldn't reach all of his short balls. It seemed like a very long court the way he was making his short shots."

Sherratt said it had been a great experience, playing on a show court in front of a sizeable crowd with a fair number of Island supporters cheering him on.

"There's a big gap between professional and amateur and it's just great for us to be able to grab a piece of that," he said.

Sherratt now goes into the Plate competition. "I will be disappointed if I don't come away with a victory," he said.