The Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC) is ready to approve a continental qualification system to determine the six taking part groups within the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Full Members comparable to Pakistan, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka, amongst others, may miss out on cricket’s much-anticipated return to the Olympics after over a century.
It’s understood that the board mentioned a proposal on the latest annual common assembly (AGM), which permits for one staff from every continent. Although some particulars nonetheless should be finalized, the bulk approval for a regional qualification system is in place, with a minority of members expressing dissent.
Six groups within the males’s and ladies’s classes will contest for Olympic medals between July 14 and 29 in 2028 after the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) allowed cricket to be added to the roster for the primary time because the Paris 1900 Olympics. Whereas the ICC’s preliminary pondering was that it could shortlist the highest six-ranked groups at a pre-determined closing date, a number of Full Member nations believed such an method wouldn’t permit for a wider illustration of nations from throughout the globe.
That has now modified to a one-country-per-continent qualification system, which aligns extra with the Olympic participation ethos.
Which nations are shortlisted can be based mostly on the rankings on a set date. Nonetheless, if the ICC plan goes via, the Olympics might not have some of the broadly watched contests in world sport: India vs Pakistan. Primarily based on the present ICC T20 rankings, in each males’s and ladies’s competitions, India will qualify from Asia, Australia from Oceania, England from Europe, with one between the USA or one of many islands from the Caribbean from the Americas, whereas South Africa qualifies from Africa. ESPN-cricinfo understands that the ICC continues to be discussing the participation of the USA, which probably will get direct entry as hosts.
However questions stay in regards to the make-up of the USA males’s staff, the vast majority of whom are US residents however not naturalised US residents. The ICC can also be involved that the USA ladies’s staff is just not among the many prime 20-ranked groups in the meanwhile. A closing choice is more likely to be made on the ICC’s subsequent quarterly assembly in October.
The ECB, together with Cricket Scotland and Cricket Eire, has shaped Nice Britain Cricket, which can facilitate the choice of gamers from England, Scotland, and Northern Eire to symbolize Nice Britain on the Video games.
For the West Indies, CWI wrote to the ICC in Might, pitching two concepts that might permit one of many regional nations to symbolize the Caribbean within the Olympics. One suggestion was an inner qualifying match carried out among the many Caribbean nations, with the winner heading to the Olympics. The opposite concerned conducting a world qualifying pathway that may pit nations within the 5 ICC improvement areas alongside areas within the West Indies.
For the sixth staff, the ICC is contemplating a world qualifier, the construction of which continues to be being fine-tuned.
Talking yesterday to BBC’s Take a look at Match Particular, ECB chairman Richard Thompson stated that the IOC was eager on having a staff from every continent, which satisfies the Olympic constitution. “The desire from the IOC is to work to the ‘5 ring’ precept, which is that groups from every continent symbolize their continent,” Thompson stated.
The ICC can also be optimistic about rising the variety of taking part groups within the subsequent two Olympics, in 2032 in Brisbane and 2036. The venue for these Olympics has but to be finalised by the IOC. Thompson stated that with India anticipated to bid exhausting to host the 2036 Summer time Video games, cricket may obtain an enormous enhance.
“The hope is, after we get to Brisbane, we is perhaps as much as eight or ten groups, and in 2036, there’s a three-way shoot-out between Qatar, Saudi, and India, and clearly the true hope is that India will get in it in 2036, wherein case, cricket can be entrance and centre. Who is aware of? It could possibly be ten or 12 groups by that stage.
“At this stage, we’re there by the invitation of the IOC and on that foundation, you abide by their guidelines, and that’s to play the geography of your sport versus essentially the highest six taking part in nations.”
