Cricket barely scratches the sporting surface in Japan but there is no dearth of fans here for a sport that many would struggle to identify on screen. And no one has more, at least among the volunteers at the Korogi Sports Park, than Harmanpreet Kaur.

Even though the Indian captain did not come out to bat as India first decimated the Japanese batting, then strolled past the 58-run target in five overs for an eight-wicket win, the player with jersey No. 23 remains famous.

“I don’t know the name but No. 23, I like her. My friend is an Indian and he also likes her game a lot. I really like watching the sport and her game,” a volunteer gushed.

The venue is not for the easy-goers. Changing at least two train lines — three for some — and then walking for 15-20 minutes to reach the venue that at other times is a baseball field, a sport far more popular in the country, quite a few suffered heatstrokes and had to be administered fluids under the scorching sun.

With open temporary stands and barely any provision for shade, only the hardcore fans turned up. Among those were Virendra Maja and Aniket Yagnik, who took leave from work and came all the way from Osaka to watch the Indian team play.

The two, originally from Madhya Pradesh, are big fans of Smriti Mandhana and Shreyanka Patil. “It is a proud moment for us to watch the Indian women’s team play in Japan. We applied for leave from work and drove here to cheer for them. It feels special,” Maja said.

On the field, Shree Charani knifed through the Japan batting for a four wicket haul, then Shafali Verma’s unbeaten 15-ball 40 meant the game was over in a blink.

The reward is a repeat of the Asia Cup semifinal against Bangladesh, a challenge that will be tougher than Friday’s outing. Jersey No. 23 will, however, have the crowd behind her.

The result: Japan 57 in 19.5 overs (Ayaka Kato-Stafford 25, Shree Charani 4/10) lost to India 59/2 in 5 overs (Shafali Verma 40 not out) by eight wickets.

Alan Curr remembers V.V.S. Laxman’s 281.

He was at university when Laxman played one of Test cricket’s greatest innings against Australia at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata in 2001. Twenty-five years later, Curr, now Chief Operating Officer of the Japan Cricket Association (JCA), found himself on the phone with Laxman, only this time the Indian legend was asking the questions.

Laxman, now coach of the Indian men’s team travelling to the Games, wanted to know what to expect in Japan.

“Certainly in the two or three minutes leading up to the call, you’re like, wow, I saw this guy play a lot of cricket,” Curr tells Sportstar.

The call lasted only a few minutes, but it neatly captured Japan’s changing place in the cricket world. India was no longer simply a team Curr watched from afar. It was now a team Japan had to prepare to host.

India Women begin their Asian Games campaign against the host on September 18 at Korogi Sports Park in Nisshin.

India’s players are full-time professionals with contracts and endorsements; Japan’s women remain amateur and failed to qualify for the 2022 Asian Games tournament. Yet Japan is embracing the occasion rather than fearing it.

“It is incredibly exciting, I have waited a decade to play in the Asian Games, so finally being able to compete on home soil is something special,” says captain Mai Yanagida.

The fixture has reshaped expectations for the JCA. India’s visit has driven ticket demand the federation has never recorded, forcing it to plan for security, crowds and media.

“For years, our biggest problem was finding players to come and play matches… Whereas when you’ve got India coming, then the tickets sold out in about — it felt like about 20 minutes,” Curr says.

The stakes go beyond one result. When Japan’s men made their Asian Games debut in Hangzhou three years ago and beat Cambodia, it became national news, with highlights on major television channels — cricket briefly gaining an Olympics-style ripple.

For the women, though, cricket is still a second career squeezed around work and study. Japan has only 14 clubs, and players juggle the sport with jobs, teaching or university.

“We are not full-time professional cricketers… It definitely requires a lot of personal sacrifices,” Yanagida says.

Kurumi Ota, a systems engineer at Hitachi, knows that cost. She stepped away from the sport for seven years because of work before returning.

“When I first started playing cricket, we would sometimes practise under overpasses… Today there are international-standard grounds and grass outfields,” she says.

The JCA now has a 20-year vision to grow not just players but coaches, commentators and curators.

On September 18, Japan gets its biggest cricketing stage yet.

“I mean how often do you get to say you had V.V.S Laxman talk to you about cricket,” Curr says.