Twenty20 for 2020?

The Olympic Games are well under way now and yet again, for the fourteenth Games in a row, cricket isn't there. Fair enough, it lacks global appeal (ie, America and China don't care about it) and there aren't enough nations who would be competitive, but a campaign is growing, backed by the likes of Adam Gilchrist and Steve Waugh, for Twenty20 cricket to become an Olympic sport. That shortest form of the game would open up the field and allow a couple of dozen nations to compete with a smidgin of a chance of a medal.

New Olympic sports need to be approved by the International Olympic Committee seven years before they are staged. In other words, it is too late for cricket to be in for London 2012 and almost too late for it to be in for 2016. However, if the ICC can mount a lobbying campaign in the next year or two, it would be possible to argue for cricket's inclusion in the appropriately numbered 2020 Olympics.

If India or South Africa were considering pitching to host those Games then the inclusion of cricket would carry more weight. The fact that cricket was recognised as an official Olympic sport at the end of last year and that China plan to include it in the 2010 Asian Games (it was in the 1998 Commonwealth Games) may help.

Cricket has featured at only one Olympics. Indeed it had only one match in the Paris Games of 1900, when a "Great Britain" team (actually a touring side called the Devon County Wanderers) beat a "France" team (made up of expat Englishmen with one genuine froggie) in a 12-a-side, two-day match at a cycling track. The English English made 117 and 148 for five, beating the English French, who made 78 and 26, by 158 runs. Oddly, the American organising committee for the St Louis Games in 1904 didn't consider including it on the roster.

There has been a smattering of English first-class cricketers who have competed at the Olympics in other sports, however. Foremost among them was JWHT Douglas, the Olympic middleweight champion in 1908 who went on to captain England and Essex at cricket. Among other Olympian cricketers, Cyril Wilkinson captained Surrey from 1914 (when they won the championship) to 1920, the year he won a gold medal for hockey at the Antwerp Games. Jack Macbryan, who played one Test for England in 1924, was also in the hockey team with Wilkinson.

Finding information about non-English Olympian cricketers is harder, but I found one reference in the 2004 Wisden to MJ Gopalan, the oldest Test cricketer when he died in 2003, who chose to tour England with the India cricket team in 1936 instead of going to the Olympics in Germany with the India hockey team, for whom he was an established centre half. India won the gold medal at the Olympics, while Gopalan barely played on the cricket tour.

Comments

[Sam Silva]

Cricket is played in more countries than baseball. Yet cricket is still not an olympic game because UK is not taking a lead in pushing this as US did.

[Dave]

cricket is big on the sub continent...that’s 20% of the world population....cricket is more popular than most of the sports at the Olympics

[Christopher]

Twenty20 for 2020 - an idea whose time has come.

[Ollie]

I'm against, and simply because no one would care. Much like with tennis, the Olympics wouldn't be the pinaccle of the sport. And you can see how much an Olympic medal meant to Andy Murray. No, I think Olympic Twenty20 would carry about as much weight as the Champions Trophy.

[Katharine Sinderson]

We are the reigning Olympic cricket championships. Why spoil that? It wouldn't be 'proper' cricket anyway, so how important would it be? (P.S. If there had been allowed to be a GB football team in 1996, Clare Taylor, cricket World Cup winner and England footballer would probably have been on the team. What pity there wasn't.)

[Karen]

Actually, the IOC is dumber than dirt. It's not a valid argument that the IOC doesn't include cricket because the Americans and Chinese aren't interested. The IOC isn't going to continue baseball and softball in coming years either, because those dummies on the IOC aren't interested. Never mind the game(s) are played in Japan, all through North and Central American, the Carribean, and some of south America and occasionally europe too. No, the IOC dummies didn't get enough graft under the table or whatever.
Cricket is certainly played in enough countries where there would be interest.

I think baseball, softball, and cricket SHOULD be in the games. I don't see those IOC losers whining that luge shouldn't be in the winter games ... I mean really, how many countries are big into luge?

[Andrew Nixon]

Jonty Rhodes was selected for the South African hockey team ahead of the 1992 Olympics, but they didn't qualify. He was also called up for trials ahead of the 1996 games, but pulled out with an injury.

A rather tenuous link would be Beals Wright, winner of two tennis golds in 1904. His dad George Wright is the only man to play first-class cricket and Major League Baseball, and his grandfather Sam Wright played in the first cricket international - USA v Canada - back in 1844.