Major League Cricket to travel to Los Angeles as part of 2028 Olympics preparations in the city

A total of five matches will be played and some of them will be played on America's Independence Day, on July 4.

Updated on: Mar 21, 2026, 12:13:35 IST

Written by Prateek Srivastava

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Cricket returns to the Olympics at Los Angeles 2028 after a massive gap of 128 years. Paris 1900 was the last time cricket featured in the world's biggest sporting spectacle. And all kinds of preparations are underway. In 2024, the USA hosted some of the matches of the T20 World Cup to get their first taste of high-quality international cricket. The event saw them upset Pakistan in one of the matches, considered the biggest in the history of T20I cricket.

Suryakumar Yadav of India has already set his sights on the Los Angeles gold. (PTI)

Now, in another big move, Los Angeles will host Major League Cricket (MLC) for the first time later this year as part of the overall Olympic preparations in the city.

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What makes these matches doubly special is that this year also marks the United States of America's 250th birthday, and some of the five proposed matches will be played on America's Independence Day, July 4. The rest of these will be played three days before, on July 1.

California's Knight Riders Cricket Field is the designated venue for these five games. The match between Los Angeles Knight Riders and the Washington Freedom is one of the biggest draws during the LA leg of the MLC.

"Bringing Major League Cricket to Los Angeles is a huge milestone for our league and for the growth of cricket across the United States," said Johnny Grave, CEO of MLC.

"The Pomona Fairgrounds will be the future home of Olympic cricket in 2028, and we're thrilled to give fans in Southern California their first taste of the sport at this iconic venue," he added.

Suryakumar Yadav is ready for LA 2028!

As of now, six top teams from six continents are understood to be featuring in the 2028 event. India have won the last T20 World Cups, and the latest of their triumph came earlier this month when they beat New Zealand in the final to become the first team to win back-to-back T20 World Cup titles. They should qualify just on that. However, more information is expected in the coming months regarding the qualification process.

After winning the T20 World Cup at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav was quick to let the world know that his team was now targeting the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 as well as the T20 World Cup in the same year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prateek Srivastava
Prateek Srivastava is a senior sports journalist having been in the profession for two decades now. He started his print career with the India Today Group and later also worked for the Asian Age. In 2009, sensing the wind of change, he switched to the digital media and joined Mobile ESPN. There, he covered the 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2010 Hockey World Cup as a venue reporter. He did plenty of voice-over work too, over there. After leaving Mobile ESPN, Prateek went on to work for Cricketnext, Gocricket and Cricbuzz. At Gocricket (Times Internet Limited), he covered the 2014 T20 World from Bangladesh. There he also received a team leadership award, given at the end of the month. Prateek has also covered the 2016 T20 World Cup in India, this time working for Sportz Interactive. He also worked for Chinese giants Alibaba over two years and led their ""Short News"" content team at UC Browser. While cricket is Prateek’s expertise, he has also done a lot of golf. In fact, he has covered India’s first two European Tour events back in the late noughties. He has also done extensive writing on football having been associated with the Indian Super League for three seasons. Finally, Prateek is a literature aficionado and swears by Philip Roth and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and when he doesn’t joke, he is usually quiet and at work.Read More

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