We are a motley crew of Indian computer engineers employed in Tokyo, Japan for the past few years. Cricket has always been a passion for all of us and for the bachelors among us Cricket is the first love(girl friends come only second!). We have been playing cricket since 1995 in Tokyo. In 1996, some of us got a wild dream that we should form a team and there formed a team called "Indian Engineers' Cricket Club" in 1997 January.
When we started, we didn't know what and how it would be like playing cricket in Japan. We had only one set of kit to start with. That is, two pairs of pads, two tennis ball bats, one set of stumps, two pairs of batting gloves, no helmets and only 12 guys as members. And we survived a year with that! We practiced in a small baseball ground and used to pride that we are the first cricket playing community in Japan! We used only Tennis balls for practice mainly because some of the members were afraid of playing with the hard leather ball... But slowly and steadily we came to know of the existence of other clubs, grounds and Kanto Cup etc. When we switched to major league level and leather balls, many of the mates dropped out fearing their safety. Since then we have been growing. This website came up in 1998, membership has increased and now for almost all matches, we have a selection crisis!
We have played many matches, lost many and won a few. But that's OK guys, after all, someone has to lose for someone else to win!. We indeed believe that we performed well in all our matches and we keep improving match after match.
To cite an example, in the first match we played in 1997 against Friends XI we were all out for 51 in 15 overs! The opponent had scored 200+ runs in 30 overs. Incidentally, they were(and probably, still are) the strongest team in Tokyo. Baptism by fire, so to speak. In the last match we played in the same year, we scored 178 for 9 in 40 overs. Oh boy! just look at the difference.
On June 10, 2001, the classy Sriram Sampath, the mainstay of our batting for years, scored his maiden century, which was also the first by any of our members. On November 25 the same year, Viswa Ghosh scored an unbeaten 147 against the British Embassy. The same match also saw us posting our highest ever total(322 off 35 overs) against any opposition.
Some important milestones and events are: