The India vs Japan T20I clash was supposed to be a one-sided affair; few would have expected it to produce so much content in just ten overs.
When India-Japan was announced, it came wrapped in one word. Historic.
There was a good reason for it. This was not simply another fixture added to an increasingly crowded international calendar. The world champions, India, were travelling to Japan, the 41st-ranked team, to play a T20I as part of celebrations marking 75 years of friendship between the two countries. The match tickets, sold out in minutes, had separate fliers explaining the laws of the game. That tells you how bizarre the match was in the first place.
None of the Full-Member teams travels with a full-strength squad for games against opposition so far removed from them in cricketing stature. But India, who were anyway going to Nagoya for the Asian Games, were making a stopover in Sano in what was a great gesture. It was also, if you missed out on it, historic.
The Indian team arrived in the country with so many large suitcases that the cricketers appeared to have disappeared behind them. Rain washed away their practice session, leaving them with little to do but wander the streets, pose with ramen bowls and transparent umbrellas, and let Japan do what Japan does.
It was the sort of thing that made you think about those tickets you had not booked back in March, when you had the chance. You would have arrived in the country at this exact time, perhaps even writing this report from the venue.
Aah, you had missed a historic event.
But you would be there for the game on TV, at 9.30am.
After much delay and a five-over reduction, India's three-and-a-half-minute national song, Vande Mataram, was played, in accordance with a recent Indian government mandate requiring it to be played at official events. It was followed by the national anthem. The two songs took more than 250 seconds between them. Enough time to squeeze in one more over each, you secretly wondered, thinking of the unnecessary attempt at jingoism from the travelling contingent.
But there was something equally grand about the occasion.
India, the world's biggest cricketing force, standing alongside Japan, where the sport is still trying to find its place. For all the criticism the BCCI gets, and there was plenty of it when the match ended, it truly was historic.
And then there was the small matter of actually playing the game.
The match had started with the expectation of a formality. India should get to 90, surely? A few days earlier, Abhishek Sharma had taken exactly five overs to reach the fastest T20I hundred by a Full-Member batter in men's cricket. Why not sit down with breakfast and watch another assault on the boundary?
But the wicket turned square.
Oh.
What happened to those flat roads you had gotten so accustomed to witnessing?
India's batters could not simply swing their way out of it. Runs had to be found rather than assumed. Wickets fell. The ball moved slowly. Shreyas Iyer's 12-ball 16, at a strike rate of 133.33, ended up being the highest individual strike rate of the match.
India finished at 32 for four.
And now Japan had a chance.
This was where the match quietly stopped being an occasion and started becoming a game. The target was tiny on paper, but every ball suddenly meant so much more. Every dot ball built pressure, every single became precious, every boundary was an event, and every wicket was a plot twist.
With eight needed from the final over, it felt absurd that this had become an edge-of-the-seat finish.
There was no DRS, no television official sitting somewhere in a dark room looking at forensic replays, painstakingly examining every centimetre travelled by the ball. There were a few contentious calls: a wide given, a run-out not adjudged, a wide given and then taken back. Players looked at the umpires. The umpires looked back. People scratched their heads.
— Ben Gardner (@Ben_Wisden) September 22, 2026
It was proper gully cricket, with India deemed the “bullies”: I have the bat [power]. These are my rules. You need to follow them.
India eventually huffed and puffed and got over Japan by two runs. A game that might otherwise have been relegated to a scorecard had somehow become a talking point.
More importantly, it was fun. Proper, uncomplicated, ridiculous fun.
Someone start a 5-over-per-side World Cup with all 101 men's T20I teams.
— Rohit Sankar (@imRohit_SN) September 22, 2026
The sort where you start watching because you have to, and end up watching because you desperately want to know what happens next. Japan gave India a scare. India gave themselves a scare. It was different, edge-of-the-seat cricket. There was barely any time to build momentum, but that was precisely the point: five overs left room for comebacks, upsets and unexpected endings, and you were hooked.
Everyone was in the game, yet there was so little time that you never quite had time to settle into it. It was a wonderful contrast.
And perhaps that is the irony of it all. The game had been sold to us as historic. But of all the cricket you could have watched this year, this odd little five-over game might have also ended up being the most fun. Let’s have more of that, please!
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