Will Virat Kohli, cricket’s most marketable face, be around to play for Olympic glory in LA 2028? He would be touching 40 by then. With the passage of time and modern-day workload one cannot be sure. But this popular perception that all cricketers care for is IPL money may not be true for many. India captain Rohit Sharma recently expressed regret not to have won a gold for India.
With only a formal ratification pending at the International Olympic Committee
Will Virat Kohli, cricket’s most marketable face, be around to play for Olympic glory in LA 2028? He would be touching 40 by then. With the passage of time and modern-day workload one cannot be sure. But this popular perception that all cricketers care for is IPL money may not be true for many. India captain Rohit Sharma recently expressed regret not to have won a gold for India.
With only a formal ratification pending at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Mumbai in the next few days, cricket’s Olympic moment seems to have finally arrived, albeit at least three Olympic cycles too late.
That cricketers didn’t want it and the Future Tours Programme was irrevocable were excuses given by cricket administrators. All along what they wanted to protect was the playing window for more broadcast money. Olympic participation would also mean sparing a three-week window for Commonwealth Games, and for the Asian block, the Asian Games in a four-year cycle.
The England cricket board in the past would say that it didn’t think it was worth releasing players from its home summer. BCCI thought the same way, although it wouldn’t say it in as many words.
Before cricket’s bigwigs realised, the stocks of bilateral cricket that they were holding on to began to lose value. Globally, T20 leagues flourished and players gained greater control over their finances. Soon, administrators were forced to become less protectionist.
But the needle would move only when BCCI, the controlling unit in International Cricket Council (ICC) affairs, came on board. After BCCI, run by court-appointed administrators, returned to being governed by elected office-bearers four years back, they are known to have been nudged by the government to switch stance, support cricket's Olympic participation. India aspires to bid for the 2036 Games.
The Indian women's team participated in the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and the men's and women's teams took part in the recent Asian Games. BCCI, which once reversed its decision to contribute to the National Sports Development Fund in 2009, sponsored India’s Tokyo Olympics campaign in 2021.
In August 2021, BCCI secretary Jay Shah told HT, ‘Once cricket is added in Olympics, India will be participating’. Soon, Shah was part of ICC’s Olympic Working Group; they made a financial pitch to IOC projecting their broadcast revenue from Indian market to go up from the present $31 million to $130-260 million after cricket's Olympic inclusion.
It also helped that IOC had warmed up to the idea of engaging the South Asian population; primarily India’s massive cricket loving fan base, potentially a throng of social media followers towards Olympic sport. With T20 cricket, the idea had become feasible. In 1900 Paris, 128 years back, a two-day game four innings long was played between Great Britain and France. For a considerable time, even ODIs were seen as too long. A global market survey of ICC in 2017 showed 92 % of fans showed interest in T20Is and 87% fans wanted to see T20 in the Olympics.
In a perfect alignment of events, by then cricket had put together a structured women’s programme – Olympics requires the men’s and women’s sport – and India became hosts to the most lucrative Women’s Premier League (WPL).
Through LA 28 cricket also had the opportunity to power its USA outreach. There have been several failed attempts before. As far back as 2003, BCCI had rejected ICC’s proposal to play a tri-series in USA under a 'Project USA' programme. Now, despite limited stadia and drop-in pitches, the 2024 T20 World Cup will be co-hosted by USA with the West Indies, with the ambition of attracting the sizeable and wealthy Indian diaspora, leveraging America’s powerful sports market.
Equally, USA too wants to open up to new markets as the LA 28 committee’s proposal to include cricket and the 2026 football World Cup to be co-hosted by USA shows.
With cricket and its cousin baseball (it's variant softball has been recommended) expected to be played in Log Angeles, the average American may finally know the difference between a six and a home run.
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