Sports added to 2028 Olympics: How cricket finally made the big time

Kohli, 36, who retired from the sport’s shortest format last June after India’s World Cup triumph, said international leagues around the world had played a big role in elevating the profile of the sport and ensuring it was showcased at the Games. In terms of fandom, cricket is without a doubt one of the most popular sports in the world and the athletic skills displayed by elite cricketers are truly awe-inspiring. Without enough countries fielding teams competitive enough to stage an international contest rising to Olympic standards, cricket will not be an appealing option to the decision-makers of the IOC.

Cricket in the Olympics: Why has it taken so long?

Of these three formats, Twenty20 internationals may represent cricket’s best shot at earning Olympic sport status as these matches can be completed in about 3 hours and they are not short on excitement. In October 2023, the 141st session of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) saw the approval of five new sports to the roster of the world’s most prestigious sporting event. Baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash would now be part of the Olympic Games from 2028 onwards. «We have seen the growing international importance of cricket,» Bach said in a news conference. «The Olympic Games want to represent and want to incorporate the most popular sports worldwide.» Although cricket is not at the Olympics, the sport has currently submitted a bid to get included in the quadrennial event.

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Any future Olympic cricket is likely to involve the T20 format so that’s one box that has been ticked. Similarly, while there is an England team competing in test cricket as a full member of the ICC, this would have to change at the Olympics. A British team would be required and we saw a precedent to this when the Olympics were held in London in 2012. The Great Britain team was largely made up of players from the Devon and Somerset Wanderers Club who just happened to be touring France at that time. Cricket is not currently included in the Summer Olympics and this has been the case since 1900. Only one match has ever been played and this took place at those 1900 Games in Paris.

• On an international stage like the Olympics, this lack of clarity can work against cricket and make its path to achieving Olympic sport status far more difficult.
• A total of six teams will participate in each tournament, with details on qualification and the format of the league yet to be ironed out.
• Since then, the sport has been overlooked but there is speculation that this situation may change in the future.

Zena Wooldridge, president of the World Squash Federation, said the game is an «amazingly dynamic, diverse and demanding sport that is perfectly suited for the Olympic Games». The sport is five-a-side, on a smaller pitch – 30 by 70 yards – with players needing to pull the flag off the person with the ball instead of tackling. England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive Richard Gould feels the Olympics in the US is the perfect opportunity to showcase both the men’s and women’s games to different parts of the world. Only two delegates at the IOC session in Mumbai on Monday voted against the new sports.

While there has been a T20 revolution in the last decade, larger versions of the game take too much time and energy to be conducted on a large-scale at the Summer Games. However, there are some who feel that a brand new form of the game could be the one to appear at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. In England in 2021, The Hundred will make its debut with eight teams from across the UK competing for the inaugural title. While the test match scene has seen a modest increase to 12 participants, the T20 format is now played all over the world. With a soccer pitch, boundaries would be too short on one side due to the rectangular shape. This is one of the reasons why cricket could not be considered as a serious entrant to the summer’s games in Tokyo 2020 or Paris 2024.

Venu Pisike, the chair of the USA Cricket board, called the sport’s Olympic inclusion «a game-changer.» In the wake of Monday’s news, here’s everything you need to know about why the sport was added to the Olympic program and what it means for cricket in the U.S. Boxing’s participation remains on hold as the IOC has yet to recognise another governing body for the sport after withdrawing its recognition of the International Boxing Association earlier this year. This will be the sixth time lacrosse has been included in a summer Olympics, but the first time as a medal sport since the 1908 Games in London. The ICC World Twenty20 in 2009 will be one of the biggest sporting showcases for the United Kingdom between now and the Games and the historic Lord’s Cricket Ground is set to play host to the Olympic archery event in 2012.

Not only are the games a potentially once-in-a-lifetime target for athletes, the timing is crucial here. The Indian Premier League traditionally finishes at the end of May with the Olympics starting just a few weeks later. It’s conceivable that the top players might want to rest listen to this podcast during the IPL to make sure they are at peak fitness for the Olympic Games. Cricket keeps ticking those boxes but can it hope to attract any real interest if it does appear in future games? There are more than 100 members of the International Cricket Council but only around eight to ten of those are at a full-time professional level. The very first test match was played between England and Australia in 1877 and, by the 1960s, the list of countries included at test level had expanded to just seven.

T20 in particular is a form which levels the playing field to an extent and we have seen a number of shock results with lower ranked teams winning matches. While the current generation of elite cricketers may never have the chance to compete in the Olympics, there will be at least one team of cricketers with gold medals around their necks even before 2012. However, the ICC has promoted the idea of cricket as an Olympic sport by using a shorter format called Twenty20 (also known as T20), with limited overs (20), and only a single innings, and in which each match can be played in 2-3 hours. At the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai, India in October 2023, T20 cricket was approved to be on the Olympic Programme at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Anything beyond this point is pure speculation but there are good reasons to believe that cricket will finally appear as an Olympic sport in the not too distant future. The game has a need to open up to new territories and, in particular, it’s said to want to spread into the USA and China.

A total of six teams will participate in each tournament, with details on qualification and the format of the league yet to be ironed out. It was played for the first and last time at the 1900 Paris Olympics, and had just two participants; Great Britain and France. There was just one match, played over two days, and Great Britain won with just five minutes to spare on the second day. It’s unlikely that cricket would’ve returned to the Games without the introduction of a new format called Twenty20 − a condensed, jam-packed version of sport, in which matches generally span three or four hours rather than a full day or more.

Instead, holdouts from India and England served to stall cricket’s chance at a truly worldwide audience. All for the kinds of self-interested reasons that have characterised too many of the game’s decisions since the south Asian market was opened up by satellite television around the time of the 1996 World Cup. One final issue in the present day is the fact that international cricket has such a crowded schedule.