Japan hoping U-19 World Cup entry is just the start
TOKYO: Cricket is barely on the radar in Japan, where baseball, soccer and sumo wrestling dominate the sporting landscape, but all that could be about to change after its U-19 team qualified for the World Cup in South Africa. Japan will face their biggest test yet when they play India in Bloemfontein on Tuesday. They were lucky to have got a point after their first match against New Zealand was washed out in Potchefstroom on Saturday.
It is early days yet, of course, with the Japanese Cricket Association (JCA) founded in 1984 and made an ICC member only in 1995. The U-19 side was founded in 2017 and took part in 2019’s EastAsia Pacific qualifying tournament to get some practice.
After a 170-run win over Samoa in their opener, however, they went undefeated to book their place in the U-19 World Cup, which started Friday. The team includes five players of Indian origin and several with mixed heritage, reflecting Japan’s slowly increasing cultural diversity. “Cricket is an international sport and with the changing Japanese domestic demographic, this is what the future is going to be,” said JCA chief executive Naoki Alex Miyaji, who has a Japanese father and Scottish mother. Miyaji pointed to the success of Japan’s rugby team at the 2019
World Cup, where a squad featuring 16 players born outside the country reached the quarter-finals for the first time.
“We need to change and see that traditional Japanese thinking is not going to help Japan in the future. Japan needs to open up a bit,” Miyaji said. “We need to learn (from) ... the really good reception from the Japanese people after the World Cup. Those players ... are Japanese, they speak the language and represent the values people can relate to.”
In a bid to increase the number of people playing cricket from the current 3,000, the JCA have targeted two “Cities of Cricket”— Sano, which is 80 km (49.71 miles) north of Tokyo, and Akishima, which is to the west of the capital. “Rather than throw a massive blanket over Tokyo and capture everyone we can, we have gone for a more targeted approach,” said the JCA’s head of operations, Alan Curr.
“We got cricket into the schools and set up the junior Cricket Blast programme. It is six-a-side, fun cricket where everyone gets a bat, everyone gets a bowl. It is all about being inclusive and having a laugh.”
The programme has produced 11 of the 14 players in the under19s squad including Kazumasa Takahashi, an all-rounder who debuted in Japan’s senior team the day after his 15th birthday.
Japan play India on Tuesday.