Push For Olympic Qualifiers Gathering Steam Ahead Of Singapore Cricket Meetings

Momentum is building for T20 qualification tournaments – not rankings – to determine which countries make the cut for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, with the issue to be debated at the International Cricket Council’s upcoming meetings in Singapore.

Cricket’s 128-year exile will end with the six-team men’s and women’s competitions to be played at a temporary venue in Pomona, 30 miles east of Los Angeles. While the venue was announced in April, it has remained an unknown over how teams will qualify.

Allocation via the ICC’s T20 rankings at a cut-off date had been deemed as the likely outcome, but it is learned that qualifiers – which would include top performing Associate nations – is being strongly considered amid several different proposals.

The meetings during the annual conference in Singapore from July 17-20 are set to be pivotal. But a final decision might not be reached until the next quarterly meetings later in the year.

The U.S, whose men’s team produced a barnstorming performance at last year’s T20 World Cup on home soil, as host nation are likely to get an automatic slot although possibly in just one gender.

The low number of six teams per gender for the Olympics has irked some smaller cricket nations who would not be able to qualify through a rankings system. The IOC have tried to slim down numbers at the Olympics and a total of 90 athlete quotas have been allocated for each gender in cricket, which means every team can name a 15-member squad.

There is influential support for qualifying tournaments, which have provided great drama and spectacle in rival sports such as basketball and its truncated game of 3×3.

“We should really make the most of cricket being in the Olympics and have qualifying tournaments instead of rankings, which don’t make sense in terms of trying to develop the sport,” Zimbabwe Cricket chair Tavengwa Mukuhlani, an ICC board director and part of the Olympic working group since 2020, told me.

“The qualifying tournaments should be for everyone and not just Full Members (cricket’s 12 nations who receive the most power and funds).

“It’s fairer and if you look at other major sports, like football and basketball, you see some amazing things happen where underdog nations qualify.”

Proponents of rankings argue that it is cost efficient and negates the logistical difficulties of organizing qualifiers amid cricket’s increasingly cramped schedule.

A combination of rankings and qualifying tournaments, a template used in some other Olympic sports, is another option.

“Discussions will be focused on what is the best option and there is the cost factor to consider, but inclusivity has to be a factor too and it would be great to showcase a curtain raiser before the Olympics,” Sumod Damodar, one of the three Associate member representatives on the Chief Executives’ Committee, told me.

“We need to make sure the right decision is made for cricket because the sport wants to be part of Brisbane 2032 and beyond. We don’t want to be in situations where every four years we are begging for inclusion.”