Teh Grauniad wrote:After 150 years, Japan is finally falling in love with cricket
Often confused with croquet, the game is becoming ever popular with plans afoot for an international ground
It is a scene that will be familiar to cricket lovers the world over: furious running between the stumps after the smack of leather on willow, applause for a well executed cover drive, and cheers for a rare six.
Yet the shouts of encouragement from the edge of the boundary are in Japanese, and the aural backdrop is provided by countless cicadas nestling unseen in the trees.
Out in the middle, Japan’s batsmen are making a late attempt to close in on the 148 run target set by their opponents, West Kathmandu cricket club, in their Twenty20 match in Sano, a town of 120,000 people in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo.
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