India and Japan will meet in international cricket for the first time ever when the two sides play a one-off T20I at the Sano International Cricket Ground in Tochigi Prefecture on September 22. The match, contested for the Suzuki Cup, has been arranged to mark 75 years of diplomatic relations between India and Japan, and doubles as a warm-up for both teams ahead of the Asian Games men's cricket competition, which begins in Nisshin on September 24.
Shreyas Iyer leads the touring India squad, which is essentially the same group named for the Asian Games: Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh and 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. It is a full-strength group by Japan's standards, and Bumrah's involvement means India's frontline pace attack from the recent Afghanistan series is intact heading into both fixtures in Japan.
Japan have named a 15-member squad captained by Kendel Kadowaki-Fleming, the country's all-time leading T20I run-scorer. The squad includes wicketkeepers Wataru Miyauchi and Alex Shirai-Patmore, plus Jake Kusuda-Nairn, a spin-bowling all-rounder handed a call-up on the back of a strong domestic season, and the returning Tsuyoshi Takada. Japan were ranked 41st in the ICC men's T20I rankings earlier this year, a gulf that makes this fixture more about occasion and development than a competitive contest on paper.
The match is the first step of a broader "Sport 75" push connected to a summit agreement between the Indian and Japanese prime ministers aimed at deepening sporting ties between the two countries, with India's own Olympic ambitions for 2036 part of the wider backdrop. For Japan, facing a full-strength India side — reigning T20 World Cup champions — in front of a home crowd is a rare opportunity to test their development against the best in the world. For India, it is a low-stakes hit-out before the real business of defending their Asian Games gold begins two days later.
Given the gap in experience and ranking, a comfortable India win is the expected outcome, and results here should be read in that context rather than as a form guide for the Asian Games. The more interesting subplot is workload and team combinations — how India's think tank rotates a squad that needs to be sharp for a group stage starting just two days later, and whether fringe players like Sooryavanshi get a longer look with the group stage opposition likely to be similarly one-sided.
There is almost no turnaround between Sano and Nisshin: the Asian Games men's competition opens on September 24 with a single round-robin group stage running through September 26, ahead of semi-finals on October 1 and the medal matches on October 3. India go in as the side defending the gold medal they won the last time cricket featured at the Games, and Shreyas Iyer's group will have had exactly one hit-out — against Japan — to settle combinations before the tournament that actually carries a medal.
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Squad details and match context are verified against same-day reporting, current as of September 21, 2026.
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