It isn’t usually that you’d discover cricket and Japan in the identical sentence. The sport could have been launched to the locals by the British within the nineteenth century, but it surely hasn’t but fairly caught the creativeness of the individuals in one among Asia’s sporting superpowers.
However, issues are altering. And you might see the change at Centurion this previous week. Three feminine cricketers educated on the SuperSport Park, forward of the inaugural version of the World Cricket Match this week at Irene, close to Centurion.
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Akari Nishimura, Elena Kusuda and Erika Oda reached Centurion forward of Christmas and in addition watched the primary Check between South Africa and India. “It was nice watching a Check in entrance of such an enormous crowd,” mentioned Elena. “Having grown up in Brisbane, I used to look at Assessments on the Gabba.”
She is thrilled that she has develop into part of the brand new ladies’s match in South Africa and is trying ahead to the occasion that options stars of South African ladies’s cricket like Sune Luus, Anneke Bosch and Masabata Klaas. “It is a large alternative for us and ladies’s cricket in Japan,” she mentioned.
Like Elena, Erika too has watched Check cricket earlier than, in New Zealand. “I really feel actually fortunate to have the ability to play cricket in such an exquisite facility right here in South Africa, with nice coaches, power coaches, physios, every thing,” he mentioned. “It’s an unimaginable expertise contemplating we’re from a rustic the place cricket continues to be creating.”
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The Japan Cricket Affiliation (JCA) believes the event will now be sooner following the IOC’s choice to incorporate cricket within the 2028 Olympics. “It represents a significant alternative for cricket in Japan and we’re enthusiastic about working with the Japan Olympic Council within the coming years,” mentioned Naoki Alex Miyaji, CEO, JCA.
Alan Curr, Head of Cricket Operations, JCA, mentioned the IOC’s choice helped the sport achieve extra consideration. “Now we have a splendidly various cricket neighborhood,” he mentioned. “Ladies’s cricket in Japan maybe peaked between 2008 and 2012 after we had a robust workforce and received bronze on the 2010 Asian Video games.”