Cricket made its fleeting appearance at the Olympics in Paris way back in 1900. Since then, the sport is set to return for the first time and it will be a six-team event for both men’s and women’s. However, there is no official word on the qualification criteria yet.
Cricket is one of the five new disciplines at the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028. The sport is returning to the mega event after making a fleeting appearance in 1990 during the Paris Olympics. It will be a six-team competition in both men’s and women’s categories with each team requiring to name 15-member squads, allocating 90 athlete quotas for each category.
The official program for LA28 Olympics was released on Wednesday (April 9) and Cricket was one of the inclusions that was confirmed. However, there is no clarity on the qualification criteria yet. If USA, being the home team, gets direct qualification, it would leave top teams fighting out for fewer spots.
In its proposal to include Cricket in LA28, the ICC had suggested that six teams could be shortlisted based on the T20I rankings at a specific cut-off date. But nothing is finalised yet and the final call is expected to be made this year. Kit McConnell, the IOC’s sports director, stated in October 2023 that the home team generally qualifies directly in team sports.
“Normally, the host country is one of the teams in the team sports, and then we look at a balance of global strength and regional representation, and try and find that balance within the available quota as well,” he had said. There is also a question of who will represent the West Indies as islands in the Caribbean participate as separate countries at the Olympic Games and even the Commonwealth Games.
At the Birmingham CWG in 2022, Barbados took part in Women’s T20 cricket as they were the champions of West Indies’ regional competition at the time – the Twenty20 Blaze.
