Women’s T20 games at CWG played a key role in getting cricket an Olympic berth

MUMBAI:  Women’s cricket in the form of a T20 competition at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022 played a key role in convincing the top officials of the Organizing Committee of the Los Angeles Olympic Games to propose cricket as one of the additions sports.

Besides the Inclusion of Women’s T20 competition as a medal sport at last year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, the success of professional leagues like the Indian Premier League (IPL) and Major League Cricket also helped in convincing the La 2028 administrators that cricket will be a game changer and thus proposed it as one of the additional sports.

Niccolo Campriani, a three-time Olympic gold medallist shooter from Italy who is the sports director of LA 2028, said observing cricket matches at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games was amazing and convinced them more than the presentation by the International Cricket Council (ICC) that cricket will be the game changer for LA Olympic Games.

“There was also karate, kickboxing, and breaking (that LA 2028 was considering). What we did is for every sport we had one formal submission from the international federation, one observation — which for cricket was at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. The observation from the CWG was just amazing. We all loved it. We got a glimpse of what cricket can be in the LA context. We were not planning to fly for an IPL game, so that observation was critical. So yes, women’s cricket played a critical role (in moving them to pick cricket as an additional sport),” Campriani told the media in the mixed zone after Cricket was picked as one of the five additional sports for Los Angeles.

Campriani said that cricket’s growth as the fastest-growing sport in the world, the success of its professional leagues and its marketability in the United States were the other factors that convinced them. IANS

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