Japan vs India only T20I – India bat first in five-over shootout against Japan

Toss India chose to bat vs Japan

India’s first foray into international cricket in Japan turned out to be a banana peel of a shootout after heavy rain on the two days before the match pushed this one-off contest to the shortest-possible duration to constitute a match: five overs. There was no rain on the day of the match, but the drying of a ground not used to top-flight cricket took some time.

Having won the toss – Shryeas Iyer has only lost two in his career as international captain – India decided to bat first no doubt keeping in mind the fading light under the now cloudy skies. Japan’s captain Kendel Kadowaki-Fleming said he would have invited India to bat anyway to serve the crowd that turned out to watch the global superstars.

However, the crowd was denied a sighter of Jasprit Bumrah as India left out Bumrah, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Vipraj Nigam from their 14-member squad. It meant India continued to play three allrounders in Axar Patel, Shivam Dube and Washington even though only two of them might be required to bowl given the short duration of the match.

The powerplay was proportionately cut down to the first nine legal deliveries of each innings.

Japan made one change to the XI that took on Hong Kong three days ago, leaving out wicketkeeper Wataru Miyauchi for Alexander Shirai-Patmore.

India 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Sanju Samson (wk), 3 Ishan Kishan, 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt.), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Axar Patel, 7 Shivam Dube, 8 Washington Sundar, 9 Yash Thakur, 10 Ravi Bishnoi, 10 Arshdeep Singh

Japan 1 Lachlan Yamamoto-Lake, 2 Reo Sakurano-Thomas, 3 Kendel Kadowaki-Fleming (capt.), 4 Benjamin Ito-Davis, 5 Charlie Hara-Hinze, 6 Ibrahim Takahashi, 7 Alester Kadowaki-Fleming, 8 Alexander Shirai-Patmore (wk), 9 Declan Suzuki, 10 Makoto Taniyama, 11 Shoma Sugaya-Slater

Source link