Udaan ¡ Sport & Wellness ¡ Science & Learning
Bihari Jalwa: from IIT Kanpur to Japan's national cricket team
He had a few hours to accept a job in a country he had never thought about. He spent them finding out one thing: whether Japan played cricket.
Abhishek Anand
Japan ¡ 4 min read
A few hours, and one search
The offer came through campus placements at IIT Kanpur: Accenture, in Japan. Abhishek Anand had a few hours to say yes or no.
He did not spend them reading about salaries or visas. He opened a browser and searched for cricket in Japan â and found, more or less at random, an article about Japan playing in the T20 World Cup qualifiers. A country with a national team was a country with a game. That was enough.
Three years of club cricket later, he was wearing Japan's colours in a T20 International.
Japan was never part of the plan.
The barrack ground at Danapur
He was born in Bihar's Rohtas district and grew up in Patna. Most of his childhood was spent on one patch of ground: the barrack ground at Danapur Cantonment.
It is not much to look at â bare earth, a stretch of grass, a set of stumps and a dozen games going on at once. It is where the soft-ball cricket started, long before anyone handed him a leather ball.
A deal with the family
The game came with terms at home. Cricket could stay, as long as the marks did too â so he kept both, and the balance he struck to protect his cricket is the same one that carried him through the IIT entrance exam.
The deal held. At home today, the trophies fill a glass cabinet, and a Cricket Japan banner hangs on the wall beside it.
If I wanted to continue playing without objections from my parents, I had to do well in academics too.
Leather ball at Kanpur
IIT Kanpur was where he first played with a leather ball. Before campus, it had only ever been soft-ball.
He was studying chemistry on the five-year BS-MS programme, and on the ground he was up against strong players, some from IIT and many from outside. Holding his own against them changed what he thought cricket could be. He went on to captain the institute's team.
It was not a clean balance. Tournaments clashed with exams and labs; some important matches were missed for academic deadlines, and some deadlines for matches. He graduated in 2022.
That's when I realized, "Maybe I'm not that far behind."
The batter who came back from hospital
The match he will not forget came at Udghosh, IIT Kanpur's sports festival, when he was captaining the IITK alumni side.
In the semi-final, one of their main players was badly injured and taken to hospital. The rest of the side batted and fell; everyone was out except the man who wasn't there. Then, to everyone's surprise, he came back just in time, padded up, and walked out to bat. The match turned. They went on to win the tournament.
He had been following the scorecard from the hospital!
Tokyo Falcons, then a Japan cap
In Japan he joined Tokyo Falcon Cricket Club, reached out to the Japan Cricket Association, and kept playing â around a full-time career in tech, at Accenture Japan and then Manulife Japan.
After three seasons with the club, the call came. He made his T20I debut for Japan against the Cook Islands on 9 May 2025, and has since played 18 T20 Internationals: a middle-order batter who can bowl right-arm medium pace, with 275 runs and a top score of 55.
Language and communication were the hard part at first. What he found in the Japanese workplace sounded a lot like a dressing room.
The culture here values discipline, teamwork, and humility.
Seventy-five off twenty-three
Weekend club cricket is where Japan first saw what he could do with a bat â and some afternoons it showed on the scoreboard. One of them reads 75 runs off 23 balls.
Club cricket brought the trophies and the medals too, before the pink national shirt with 29 and ANAND on the back.
Different jerseys, same roots
On 22 September 2026, India played Japan in a men's T20I for the first time, at the Sano International Cricket Ground north of Tokyo. Rain cut it to five overs a side, and India won by two runs off the last ball.
Abhishek was at the ground but not in the XI. At the Asian Games only a country's own nationals can represent it, so Japan sent out the same squad it is taking to the Games â the India match doubled as their practice before them.
What he got instead was a photograph that drew close to 400,000 likes on Instagram: Abhishek in Japan's kit beside Ishan Kishan and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in India's, holding up Sooryavanshi's number 03 shirt. Three players, one state, two flags.
Different jerseys, same roots. Bihar boys united by cricket.
The next dream
A Japan cap was never on the list when he boarded the plane. The next dream is one he is happy to say out loud, and it points back towards home: the Indian Premier League.
His next dream: to play in the IPL.
Every door open
He is not choosing between cricket and code yet, and does not plan to rush it. If the two ever meet, he says, it might be in sports technology.
His advice to students still torn between a degree and a passion is the one he lived: you do not have to be the best at everything, but stay consistent with what you love. And if he could say one line to the first-year who walked into IIT Kanpur, it would be this.
Relax, you're exactly where you need to be - and trust the process.
Photos: Hamro Khelkud