Sano Positions itself as the home of cricket in Japan

Nondescript town is betting big on the sport to transform its fortunes as it grapples with demographic and economic decline

- Sano Positions itself as the home of cricket in Japan

New Arena: The abrupt appearance of a cricket ground in the town of sano is mirage-like.

Sano is a nondescript town bang in the centre of Honshu, the Japanese archipelago’s largest island. Although only about 80 km from the capital, Tokyo, the town could be another planet, as sparsely populated and modest as Tokyo is flashy and thrumming. The abrupt appearance on its outskirts of an international standard cricket ground is therefore mirage-like. But this is no optical illusion. Sano bills itself as the home of cricket in Japan, and is betting on the sport to transform its fortunes as it grapples with demographic and economic decline.

How this unlikely turn of events came to be is a story that includes entrepreneurial city hall officials, baseball stars-turned cricketers and a national government strategy to revitalise regional economies, stirred in with a dollop of serendipity in the form of a half-Japanese, halfScottish cricket enthusiast called Naoki Alex Miyaji and his passion for Ramen noodles. It’s also a story with a catchy headline, given that Japan recently qualified for the first time ever to play in the Under 19 Cricket World Cup next year.

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The Japan Cricket Association ( JCA) was an organisation that existed only in disembodied name until Mr. Miyaji, who’d learned to play cricket as a child during summer holidays in the U.K., became its first full-time chief executive in 2008. The JCA office was at first located in Tokyo, but it quickly became apparent that to find