India, Japan
India and Japan players (Credits: Twitter)

India and Japan’s U19 players, on Tuesday, once again proved that cricket is truly a gentleman’s game. After a lopsided contest in which India thrashed Japan by ten wickets, the players from both the sides spent some together. As expected, India made light work of Japan who are playing in the ICC U19 World Cup for the very first time.

India, who are also the defending champions, bowled out Japan for mere 41 runs in 22.5 overs with leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi taking four wickets and Kartik Tyagi picking up 3. Japan’s 41-all out was the joint third-lowest team total in U19 international cricket history.

It took India just 29 balls (4.5 overs) to chase the joint second-lowest in the history of the U19 World Cup. Yashasvi Jaiswal and Kumar Kushagra remained unbeaten on 29 and 13 respectively as India registered the 2nd largest margin of victory (in terms of balls remaining) in all U19 ODIs.

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Japan would have scored well below 41 had India not given away 19 extras (12 wides, 7 leg byes).  None of the Japan batsmen managed to get double-digit scores whereas 5 of them got dismissed for a duck. Shu Noguchi (7) and Kento Dobell (7) emerged as the joint highest run-scorer among the team.

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India
India U19 team(Credits: Twitter)

And after the game ended, India U19 captain Priyam Garg came up with a beautiful gesture. Showing ‘spirit of cricket’, heinvited the Japanese team for a group photo. Not only that, the players also celebrated the birthdays of India player Dhruv Jurel and Kento Ota Dobell. Both the birthday boys cut the cake together as their teammates sung for them.

Japan U19 team, meanwhile, has struggled to do well in South Africa so far. In both of their warm-up games, both Scotland and UAE scored above 300 runs against them as they got out for 69 and 129 respectively. Their World Cup-opener against New Zealand was then washed out away.