India vs Group B Runner-up

India face the Group B Runner-up at Korogi Athletic Park (5,000 capacity) in Nisshin, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, on September 28, 2026, with first ball at 9:00 AM JST (UTC+9) in Quarterfinal 1 of Cricket at the 2026 Asian Games. India are the defending champions, having won gold at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games.

At Hangzhou in September 2023, India fielded a side without the first-choice players whose schedules were occupied by BCCI domestic and international commitments, won every match in the tournament, and lifted the gold medal against Afghanistan in the final with a performance of such control that it barely generated debate. That is the specific weight the defending champion carries into Japan: not just a title, but a title won without their strongest available XI. Every team in the quarterfinals is aware of this.

The Asian Games occupy a particular place in Indian cricket’s institutional landscape that no other multi-sport event does. The Olympics did not include cricket until Los Angeles 2028 and the Commonwealth Games dropped cricket from their programme in 2022. The Asian Games is, for now, the only multi-sport event where India can win a cricket gold medal. For the BCCI, that has historically made squad selection for this tournament something of a lower priority: the players who appear are often fringe international cricketers or those between IPL contracts. For the players themselves, it is different. An Asian Games gold medal is an Olympic-equivalent honour in Asian sport, and for a cricketer who may never play a full Test or T20 international, it is the highest honour their career will produce.

Cricket in Japan at Korogi Athletic Park adds a dimension that no ICC event provides. The ground is purpose-built for these Games, configured from a baseball facility in Nisshin, a small city east of Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture. Five thousand spectators is modest by the standards of any Indian cricket venue; Wankhede holds six times as many. But the occasion is not Wankhede. It is an Asian Games quarterfinal in a country where cricket is a fringe sport, which makes India’s presence here a kind of cricket diplomacy.

A 9:00 AM JST start translates to 5:30 AM IST in India (a testing time for a country that usually watches cricket in prime time), midnight GMT in London, 11:00 AM AEST in Sydney, and 8:00 PM EDT the previous evening in New York. For live conversions, check Japan time and India time.

India have been dominant in Asian Games cricket since the sport was reinstated at the 2010 Guangzhou Games, winning gold in both 2010 and 2023. The team they send to Japan in 2026 will know this record and the expectation it carries. For the Group B Runner-up facing them, a quarterfinal against India at the Asian Games is the kind of match a player spends the rest of their career describing.