Cricket is officially in the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028!!!!!
https://www.icc-cricket.com/media-releases/3738853
This is a Big Freaking Deal. The Olympics means something to Americans, especially an Olympics staged on home soil. It means two weeks of tuning into NBC, waving the American flag, hearing the stirring John Williams music, seeing Bob Costas get pinkeye or whatever he’s doing, and, most of all, watching and caring about sports they would never ever watch at any other time.
Finally, after 128 years, cricket will be one of those sports. We don’t have a lot of information about the nature of the tournament, but we do know these facts:
- It will be played using the T20 format. For those not aware, unlike traditional Test cricket, which can run for five days, T20 only lasts about 3 to 4 hours, and there is a lot of big hitting, diving catches, colorful clothing, and loud music and maybe even cheerleaders
- There will be six teams each in the men’s and women’s competitions. In most sports, as a rule of thumb, the host nation gets to field a team regardless of how they rank in the world rankings. The USA is about 20th or so in T20 cricket on both the men’s and women’s sides, so we will have to face an uphill battle in each game, but that’s OK, because the only way to improve is to face difficult competition.
- The other five teams in each competition will be based on the world rankings at some cutoff date. This means almost certainly that both India and Pakistan will make the competitions. This is huge for worldwide viewership and overall interest in the events. India and Pakistan have a huge network of ex-pats throughout the world, including in the US, and their rivalry dwarfs all others for fan interest.
- The venues for the games are not certain, but we do know that the LA Knight Riders, a founding member of Major League Cricket, which had its inaugural season in 2023, are “negotiating” with the city of Irvine, CA to build a 10,000-seat cricket stadium as part of that city’s Great Park development. We also know that Los Angeles is home to a large cricket facility in Woodley Park, with several cricket fields and a few amenities. These two sites are probably the front-runners for the hosts for the men’s and women’s tournaments respectively, but LA28 and USA Cricket now have a little under five years to figure that out.
There are a number of other aspects of this announcement that are pure speculation, but would be in line with other sports that have become Olympic sports over the years:
- Even though only the top five countries and the US will qualify for the Olympics, the fact that cricket is now an Olympic sport means that nations all over the world that have national cricket teams will get extra support and money from their governments, Olympic organizations, and private sponsors. Cricket will almost certainly be part of the 2032 Brisbane Games in Australia, and India is thinking about bidding for the 2036 Olympics, which means cricket is only likely to grow in the next 13 years as an Olympic sport, and more nations will have a chance to participate.
- With the Olympics being held in the US in 2028, this means a general buildup of interest from American fans, players, administrators, sponsors and government officials in the next four-plus years. USA Cricket has a golden opportunity to take advantage of that interest to trumpet their inclusion in LA and to ask for support and funding for infrastructure, advanced training gear, better facilities, higher-level youth competitions, more participation especially from girls and women, and all other sorts of benefits, including social media and traditional media awareness. The US teams should be able to arrange home fixtures against the better teams in the years leading up to the Olympics, because those other teams don’t want walkovers any more than the US does, and they want to help improve the US team to make the competitions more entertaining. The other teams also want to become familiar with the grounds and playing conditions.
- The participation aspect is worth mentioning again. Everyone can understand the idea of winning an Olympic medal. The other cricket competitions around the world are often only important to certain nations or are fairly new on the scene and don’t have the gravitas that the Olympics has. If USA Cricket can send people into school districts and tell the school administrators that they want to set up a program to help the US win an Olympic medal, this will grab their attention like nothing else will. There are only about 200 women who regularly play competitive cricket in the US as of this writing. The idea that you can travel to Los Angeles, Brisbane, or Mumbai, walk in the opening ceremony behind your flag, and represent your nation in the sport of cricket has the potential to revolutionize the nature of the sport, especially among US women athletes, but only if the powers that be in US cricket can seize the opportunity.