Cricket Returns To The Olympics At Los Angeles 2028 Games

Cricket will return to the Olympics at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

The popular British Commonwealth bat and ball game, often deemed as the world’s second most popular sport and obsessively followed through the well-populated South Asian region, was officially included at the 2028 Games at the International Olympic Committee’s session in Mumbai on Monday.

Cricket joined baseball/softball, flag football, lacrosse and squash as part of 33 sports to feature at the LA Games.

It ends a long absence for cricket at the world’s biggest multi-sports event with its sole appearance being at the 1900 Olympics. It follows a long-winded push from administrators, who had overcome resistance from its most powerful countries.

Voting at the IOC Session was essentially a formality and – as I’ve reported throughout the year – confidence had been increasingly rising from those close to cricket’s bid.

“This is a win-win situation,” IOC president Thomas Bach said ahead of the vote. “The Olympic Games will give cricket a global stage and the opportunity to grow beyond its traditional countries and regions.

“And for the Olympic movement it’s the opportunity to engage with a fan and athlete community to which we have had very little, or even no, access.

“One can enrich the other. In India you see the growing Olympic spirit, and a number of Olympic sports are gaining strength and becoming popular, but cricket is still the number one sport.”

It means cricket is all but assured of being part of the 2032 Olympics in the sport’s heartland of Brisbane, Australia.

“We look forward to working with the Australian Olympic Committee in the lead-up to the Los Angeles Games and are hopeful this will be the start of a long-standing relationship between cricket and the Olympics, including for Brisbane 2032,” Cricket Australia chief Nick Hockley said.

“This is a game-changer for our sport that is already among the fastest growing in the world. The Olympic Games will undoubtedly increase the global reach of cricket, inspiring a whole new generation to love and play the game.”

Cricket, both men’s and women’s, has been earmarked to be played under the three-hour T20 format and it is expected that there will be six or eight teams per gender.

All-powerful India had been reluctant previously fearing losing its autonomy to the country’s Olympic committee, while also potentially posing clashes with lucrative bilateral series.

England too had been reticent with the summer Olympics clashing with its home season.

As I first reported in December 2020, an ICC working group was formed by then acting chair Imran Khwaja but has been tweaked numerously in the years since.

Olympic inclusion at the Los Angeles Games was targeted by cricket chiefs with the sport continuing its push into the world’s biggest sports market.

While the Olympics will benefit from cricket’s heft in South Asia, a rising financial power, there will be immeasurable benefits for the sport to grow beyond traditional borders.

Olympic inclusion provides invaluable status and potentially unlocks government funding for the sport in non-traditional cricket countries. “You’re not taken seriously in Japan unless you’re an Olympic sport. For non-playing countries, cricket is seen as a minor sport,” Japan Cricket Association head of operations Alan Curr told me earlier this year.

Cricket had made a recent return to the Asian Games in a snapshot of what lies ahead in Los Angeles and beyond.