Friendly “Twenty20″ Cricket in Jozankei May 16 2011, 6:47pm via studio343.jp

I’d forgotten how much fun Cricket can be. After a few weeks away it was cool to catch up with some friends jump in the car and take a road trip up to Jozankei just out side of Sapporo.
Great weather welcomed us and 2 teams ready to do battle – it was basically India and Pakistan v’s the World, the World being a rag tag collection of expats from all over and 1 Japanese guy.
(click on the images to view them at a larger sizes)

Being Australian and bought up on cricket i was keen but i hadn’t actually played cricket for about 25 years but before i knew it found myself steaming in to the crease fancying myself as a pace man. It didn’t quite work out as a was hoping no glory and lots of wides.
The rules have changed since i last played with the advent of Twenty20 apparently and anything bowled down the leg side is a wide…anyway it was all good although we got smashed.

The world went in to bat and I thought we were doing pretty well when all of a sudden we were rocked by a stunning HAT TRICK.

Brendon Simon and Sam all gone in 3 Balls – ouch.

Kiwi Brendon restored some pride for the World but it wasn’t quite enough and we were down going into the lunch break but not out of the game. Check out the serious lunch BBQ.

At the end of the day India Pakistan were too good for the World ( no one was blaming the full stomachs or copious amount of beer consumed ) will be interesting to see how the World recovers before next match.