India narrowly avoid Japanese upset in rain-hit five-over T20I 

For a team packed with international stars and reigning T20 champions, 32 runs should have been an insignificant total. Against Japan, it became a target that India had to defend with everything they had. 

India survived one of the most unusual scares in their recent T20 history on Tuesday, beating Japan by just two runs in a rain-affected one-off international at the Sano International Cricket Ground in Kanto. The match was reduced to five overs per side, turning what was expected to be a straightforward Indian victory into a tense sprint. 

India were restricted to just 32/4 after being asked to bat first. Japan’s spinners exploited a wet, slow surface superbly, with left-arm spinner Charlie Hara-Hinze claiming 2/17 and Ibrahim Takahashi taking 1/13. 

India’s top order struggled to adapt to the conditions. Abhishek Sharma fell to Hara-Hinze after mistiming a slog sweep, while Takahashi deceived Sanju Samson with a flighted delivery that was caught at the mid-wicket boundary. Ishan Kishan also departed after trying to hit against the turn, ballooning a catch to mid-off off Benjamin Ito-Davis. 

Shreyas Iyer managed to find a boundary, but India never found the acceleration normally associated with their T20 batting. With only five overs available, there was little time to recover once the wickets began falling. 

Japan, therefore, needed only 33 to create one of the biggest upsets in the history of Indian cricket. 

The hosts came remarkably close. 

Japan reached 30/3 at the end of their five overs, falling just two runs short. India’s bowlers held their nerve when it mattered, protecting what initially looked like an embarrassingly low score and turning the contest into a finish that few would have anticipated before the first ball. 

The match was historic regardless of the result. It was the first international meeting between India and Japan, with the fixture also forming part of preparations for the Asian Games and marking 75 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. 

For Japan, the narrow defeat offered something more valuable than a routine loss to a cricketing heavyweight. Their spinners showed that unfamiliar opposition can still be tested when conditions, discipline, and local knowledge come together. 

For India, the result will officially go down as another victory. The manner of it, however, provided a useful reminder of T20 cricket’s capacity to turn a mismatch on paper into a contest on the field.