India tread into the unexplored with one-off Japan meeting
Unfamiliarity for India, plenty to learn for Japan in historic T20I clash
Arigato gozaimasu. It means "thank you," and it's the one Japanese phrase both Shreyas Iyer and Washington Sundar reached for when asked what they knew of the host country.
Iyer, India's T20I captain, landed in Tokyo only a couple of days ahead of the match. At a press conference that often veered into IPL and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, he still found time to speak about the hospitality and the discipline he noticed on the streets, though he admitted he knew little about the conditions or the pitch. Sundar was just as candid, saying he loved the technology and the food, but didn’t know a lot about the players except a few reels of them he’d watched.
For Japan, that unfamiliarity cuts both ways. Cricket is not yet a mainstream sport in the country, but the ICC has been building towards a summer like this for a while. A World Cup qualifier was held in Japan earlier this year, and cricket at the Asian Games is about to bring a second international ground into use in Nisshin, alongside the existing one in Sano. A bilateral against a big-ticket team like India, played at ground whose capacity has been raised from 500 to 2,000 in anticipation, is a big step in the ICC's longer case for Japan.
For India, the game doubles as a soft opening for the Asian Games, even though the matches themselves will be played roughly 400 km away from the venue of this only T20I. But given their unfamiliarity with the host country, as was apparent in both Iyer and Sundar reaching out for the one common word of courtesy they’d picked up, even a game at a different ground offers India an early feel of what to expect.
When: Only T20I, September 22, 2026, at 1:00 PM local / 9:30 AM IST
Where: Sano International Cricket Ground
What to expect: The venue has hosted 39 men’s T20Is, with teams batting first winning 21 of those matches. The most recent match here, played a few days ago between Japan and Hong Kong, was a low-scoring affair, with the visitors chasing a modest target of 96 in the final over. The conditions are expected to be slow and spin-friendly, with temperatures set to be around 31 degrees around match start.
Team squads
Japan: Kendel Kadowaki-Fleming (c), Charlie Hara-Hinze, Benjamin Ito-Davis, Alester Kadowaki-Fleming, Kohei Kubota, Jake Kusuda-Nairn, Wataru Miyauchi (wk), Reo Sakurano-Thomas, Alex Shirai-Patmore (wk), Shoma Sugaya-Slater, Declan Suzuki-McComb, Tsuyoshi Takada, Ibrahim Takahashi, Makoto Taniyama, Lachlan Yamamoto-Lake
India: Shreyas Iyer (c), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma (vc), Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Yash Thakur, Vipraj Nigam
Did you know?
Japan will be the 20th opponent India will be facing in T20 Internationals
At the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier 2026, Japan delivered a landmark performance by defeating Kuwait by five wickets
What they said:
“It still does sound quite surreal to be hearing about them playing here in Japan. I can't guarantee any outcome, but what I can guarantee is that we will try our best. We'll compete and hopefully we'll give it our best shot” - Kendel Kadowaki-Fleming, Japan captain
“It is going to be a thrilling and exciting match for us. This is the first time we will be playing Japan, and I don't know much about the conditions, the wicket, but I'm looking forward to having a great match” - Shreyas Iyer, India captain
