Two recently retired cricketing greats have added their weight to calls for cricket to be an Olympic sport.
Adam Gilchrist is leading a player push for Twenty20 to be included in the 2020 Olympics, believing it is an essential step in securing the game’s global future. With the start of the Beijing event less than a week away, Gilchrist says the cricket “pipedream” is a “potential reality” following the success of the new format and the Indian Premier League.
“…many of us who’ve experienced international Twenty20 cricket and the IPL are convinced that cricket should bid to become an Olympic sport in time for the Games,” Gilchrist wrote in the Deccan Chronicle.
To receive “programme status” at the 2020 Olympics, cricket would need to be approved by the IOC at a meeting seven years before the event. Twenty-six sports are part of the Beijing schedule and there are currently two vacancies for future Games. Golf, karate, baseball, softball, rugby sevens and roller sports are among the disciplines currently competing for the right to be involved in 2016.
Gilchrist believes it is time to start serious lobbying. “Between 2009 and 2013 cricket would promote itself to the IOC as a prospective sport and, if we get it right, cricket will be invited to the Olympic party in 2020,” he said.
Each Full Member cricket board has been asked by the ICC to have two national men and women players complete Olympic questionnaires. The responses in Australia have been favourable and Gilchrist, a key performer in the IPL, has also sounded out excited colleagues from Australia, South Africa and England.
Gilchrist feels the aim is realistic. “The Olympic movement knows it needs to increase its presence in the Asian subcontinent as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh contribute nearly 22% of the world’s population. In theory, this is a win-win for the Olympic movement and the ICC and its members.”
Steve Waugh, who led Australia to a Commonwealth Games silver medal at Kuala Lumpur in 1998, is part of a growing group of current and former players, including Kumar Sangakkara, Sourav Ganguly and Stephen Fleming, who have supported Adam Gilchrist’s push for Twenty20 to be part of the Olympics.
“If you want to globalise the game then you have to look at including countries like China and the United States, and getting cricket into the Olympics will fast-track that move,” Waugh told the Press Association.
Gilchrist said his proposal was a “call to arms for the game’s administrators” and James Sutherland, Cricket Australia’s chief executive, is excited by it. “When you think of the Olympics, you also think of the big nations like the US, Russia and now China,” Sutherland told the paper. “Those regions are clearly potential growth opportunities for cricket and we see Twenty20 at the Olympics as a superb vehicle.”
[taken from reports on www.cricinfo.com]