Former Indian opening batter Wasim Jaffer has shared his views on India’s hard-fought two-run victory over Japan in the one-off T20I fixture, which was played at the Sano International Cricket Ground in Japan.
In the five-over-a-side game, India batted first and posted 32/4. In response, Japan scored 30/3 in five overs, losing the game by two runs. Speaking on his YouTube channel, Jaffer reckoned that Indian batters have struggled on difficult wickets lately.
“Yes, in our batting, there is a blemish that when there is a wicket that is not flat, our batters get stuck. We also had a problem in England. When there is a little difficulty, when the ball seams a little, or the spin is very less, this match felt like a spin wicket. But initially, if there is movement, then our batters get in trouble. Maybe they want to play with the same strike rate, they want to play with the same aggression. You have to temper your game and not think only beyond 200. We have to rethink what scores to keep in mind on such wickets and what approach to take,” he said in a video on his YouTube channel.
“I was actually surprised. It’s good that we won. Otherwise, it would have been a big embarrassment. It would have been a big news that we were playing for the first time in Japan and we lost. I heard it was a difficult wicket. Even though we won by only 2 runs, it felt like we saved our reputation,” he added.
India squad for the 2026 Asian Games: Shreyas Iyer (C), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (WK), Ishan Kishan (WK), Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma (VC), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Yash Thakur
