New Delhi: A bullet train journey usually saves passengers a great deal of time, allowing them to travel long distances quickly and complete several tasks during the day. However, for India’s cricketers competing at the upcoming Asian Games in Japan, travelling by bullet train between Nagoya and Tokyo or Nagoya and Osaka could prove to be ‘too long’. Therefore, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has advised the players to stay at specially arranged hotels in Nagoya itself.
The Asian Games will be held in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, from September 19, with both the men’s and women’s cricket tournaments being played in the T20 format. India are the defending champions in both categories. India’s first cricket matches at the Games will be played on September 28.
The main issue is that Nagoya has very few hotels. Moreover, no Games Village has been built for the athletes and players participating in the Asian Games. The Games authorities have, however, created hotel-like rooms inside shipping containers and also arranged accommodation for athletes on a cruise ship. Indian cricketers are generally accommodated in five-star hotels during tours in India and abroad, mainly to ensure adequate security for the players. Earlier, there were reports that because Nagoya did not have enough large hotels, the BCCI would arrange accommodation in Tokyo or Osaka for Shreyas Iyer’s men’s team and Harmanpreet Kaur’s women’s team.
However, with the sporting event taking place in Nagoya, having the cricketers stay in Tokyo or Osaka was not considered practical. The reason is that players would have to travel for around 1.5 hours by bullet train, which can reach speeds of up to 285 kmph, to get from Nagoya to either Tokyo or Osaka. Their round trip would take around three hours — roughly the same amount of time as a T20 match! Another consideration was that more than 500 Indian athletes and over 250 officials will be staying in Nagoya ‘like one family’, so arranging accommodation for the cricketers in a major city such as Tokyo or Osaka would not have been ideal either.
Taking all these factors into consideration, the BCCI has asked the cricketers to stay in Nagoya itself, either in shipping-container accommodation or in other specially arranged, star-hotel-like facilities. The Indian cricketers will leave for Japan on September 20.
India’s Two Teams
Men’s Team: Shreyas Iyer (captain), Tilak Varma (vice-captain), Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Sanju Samson (wicketkeeper), Ishan Kishan (wicketkeeper), Shivam Dube, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana and Arshdeep Singh.
Women’s Team: Harmanpreet Kaur (captain), Smriti Mandhana (vice-captain), Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh (wicketkeeper), G. Kamalini (wicketkeeper), Pratika Rawal, Deepti Sharma, Bharati Fulmali, Shree Charani, Renuka Singh Thakur, Kranti Gaud, Arundhati Reddy, Shreyanka Patil, Radha Yadav and Nandani Sharma.
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