The Japan National Baseball Team will play a warm-up game with the Australian National Team in November for the WBC = World Baseball Classic to be held in March next year.
This was announced on the 28th by Hideki Kuriyama, the Japanese national team coach, and Atsushi Ihara, the secretary general of NPB = Nippon Professional Baseball, at a hotel in Tokyo.
The warm-up game between Japan and Australia will be held at Sapporo Dome on November 9th and 10th, and the members of Japan will be announced around October.
Coach Kuriyama was planning to play a warm-up game with the Taiwanese national team in March, but it was canceled due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection, and he decided to take command of the top team for the first time in this warm-up game. Become.
For the team, it will be a valuable battleground for the team to win the championship for the first time in three tournaments since the second tournament in 2009, when they won the championship for the second time in a row.
Coach Kuriyama said, "I couldn't make a top team because of the influence of Corona, so I want to do my best to fight for the warm-up game."
Regarding WBC, he was enthusiastic, "I think it will be a very difficult battle, but I have to win anything, and I want to play a game that conveys the wonder of Japanese baseball."
The WBC match schedule was also announced, and Japan, who entered Group B in the first round, will face China on March 9, South Korea on March 10, the team that won the qualifying on March 11, and Australia on March 12. Then the top two teams will advance to the quarterfinals.
The quarter-finals will be held on the 15th and 16th, and the semi-finals and finals will be held in Miami, Florida, USA from the 19th to the 21st.