The record books will tell you that Steve Waugh’s highest ODI score against India was an 81 he made in his debut season in 1985-86. They won’t tell you of the unbeaten 100 he made against an attack that included Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Debasis Mohanty, not to forget Sachin Tendulkar – who had taken a career-best 5 for 32 against Australia just five months earlier.
Yet, this match, during the group stages of the 1998 Commonwealth Games cricket event, was not given ODI status. Waugh’s match-winning effort, in a crushing 146-run win, is only part of his List A record, relegated to the back pages of a legendary career. One of the reasons for the competition not having ODI status was the relative strength of the teams. England didn’t even send one, while half of India’s stars – Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Mohammed Azharuddin, Javagal Srinath and Navjot Sidhu – were sent to play the ironically named Friendship Cup against Pakistan in Toronto.
That, in a nutshell, illustrates why it has been so difficult to get cricket entry into multi-sport events like the Olympic Games. If participation numbers and global appeal are the criteria, cricket would be a shoo-in for the quadrennial event. You could argue that along with football, basketball and athletics, cricket is the only sport that commands the attention of hundreds of millions. Compared to cricket’s popularity, especially in south Asia, many Olympic sports are niche events.
Why then has cricket not been part of the five-rings spectacular since the Paris Games of 1900? At that stage, the concept of the Olympic Games hadn’t really taken shape, and many sports, including the cricket event, were held as part of the Great Exposition or the World’s Fair.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin had been inspired to include cricket in his vision of the modern Games after witnessing the Much Wenlock Games in the UK in the 1990s. But they had to be removed from the Athens schedule in 1896 because of a lack of participants, and though four teams, including the Netherlands and Belgium, had signed up to play in Paris, withdrawals meant that there was just one ‘final’ played.
Great Britain was represented by Devon and Somerset Wanderers, five of whom played for Castle Cary Cricket Club – an institution formed in 1837 that still exists. Their opponents were “France” only in name. Standard Athletic and Union Cricket Club, who contributed players to the team, were mostly made up of English expats, several of whom had initially moved to France to work on the construction of the Eiffel Tower.
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Great news for cricket fans as cricket is very much in the fray for a comeback at the Los Angeles @Olympics in 2028. Listen in for the latest. @ThumsUpOfficial @BoriaMajumdar #Cricket pic.twitter.com/ldlheeu4CH— RevSportz (@RevSportz) April 13, 2023
Later, there was some talk of cricket being included in the Olympics in St. Louis (1904) and London (1908), but that never came to fruition, with de Coubertin admitting that not enough countries played the sport. That is hardly the case now. One of sport’s most romantic tales in the 21st century is the rise of Afghanistan’s cricket team, whose pioneers learned the game in refugee camps in Pakistan. Others like Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Ireland – conquerors of Pakistan in the 2007 World Cup, and England four years later – have scripted their own eye-catching stories.
By definition though, an Olympic gold medal should be the pinnacle of your sport. This is why there has often been unease over the inclusion of tennis and golf in the games. Will winning gold ever compare to taking the Wimbledon title at SW19? Can the top step of the podium at the Olympics match winning the Open at St. Andrews on the course once dominated by the likes of Tiger Woods and Tom Watson?
In that regard, cricket is fortunate that it has three formats to choose from. Test cricket has no place at the Olympics, primarly because of the time it takes to complete a match. Also, no Olympic gold could ever compete with the history of the Ashes, or even a rivalry like India-Australia. The same could be said of the 50-over game as well. Its popularity may have declined, but the World Cup final is still a centrepiece of the sport – a stage once graced by Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne, Imran Khan and so many other titans.
But Twenty20 is a different matter. It’s been the vehicle to spread the cricket gospel over the past 15 years and more, and a T20 World Cup would now sell out in most corners of the world. It’s also not weighed down by tradition. Many players are now guns for hire, playing in leagues across the world. Some of them have even given up on national duty. Having an Olympic event in the T20 format would drastically change those attitudes.
Who wouldn’t want to rub shoulders with the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps or Shelly-Ann Fraser-Price? With the possible exception of the IPL, no multi-million-dollar contract in any league could ever give you the profile you’d get if you won a medal at the Olympics. When you see how closely the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma follow the achievements of their brethren from Olympic sports, you know that they wouldn’t treat an Olympic event as some fortnight-long holiday.
We will know for certain in a couple of months’ time if cricket finds a place in the schedule for the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028. By then, Major League Cricket would have grown some roots, and the Los Angeles Knight Riders would likely be playing in a purpose-built stadium. Cricket’s administrators were incredibly insular for the longest time. But the new breed of officials understands that a sport needs more than India, England and Australia to stay relevant. Finding a place inside the Olympic tent is the next logical step. When it does finally happen, fans across the world are likely to ask: What took so long?