Japan gets crash course in cricket, Asian Games bring sport to new audience

India survived a Japanese scare in the contest by five points The first recorded cricket match in Japan was played 163 years ago in Yokohama, but the sport never really took hold of the Japanese people. About 7,300 people are currently registered with the Japan Cricket Association – that’s about 0.00593% of the country’s population!However, the tech-savvy nation is leaving little to chance when it comes to creating awareness for the game. At the Korogi Sports Park, the venue of the cricket competition, spectators are given a leaflet that breaks down the basics of the sport through easy-to-understand visuals.Asian Games full coverage | Schedule | Medal totalIt explains everything from the number of players on the field and fielding positions to the referees’ signals, the difference between a four and a six and how to read the scoreboard. Even the dimensions of a cricket pitch are put into perspective, with illustrations comparing them to football and baseball pitches.Baseball mom Hinata Sato arrived with her 10-year-old son Yuto to watch the women’s final on Tuesday. Seeing her son playing baseball at the site, curiosity brought them back to the makeshift cricket stadium.“We watched cricket videos. My son wanted to see it live and having a calculator helped him understand what was happening on the ground. Cricket is really catching up in Japan,” she said.Kitchen lost in translationWhile the Indian men’s cricket team soaked up their first experience of Japanese cuisine by braving the rain in Tokyo to sample the local dishes, the athletes, who have spent more than a week here, are already craving something familiar.Those staying on cruise ships have access to Indian food, but athletes staying in hotels explore Nagoya in search of restaurants that offer a taste of home.For one vegetarian athlete, the language barrier and unfamiliarity with Japanese cuisine made the search difficult.“Hum ghaas-phoos khane wale ka fight bahut hai! Most restaurants have a non-veg smell which doesn’t agree with me. Language is a huge problem. When you ask for meatless food, they don’t understand,” said the athlete.“I’m very happy to have found a few Indian restaurants. They were very warm, gave us their contact information and sent us food whenever we asked.”