The ICC is on the verge of signing off a plan that would send one men’s and one women’s team from each continent to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Only six spots are available in each draw, so a straight-forward rankings cut-off, once favoured by a few Full Members, is being set aside for something the board feels is more “Olympic” in spirit.
Board members thrashed out the broad outline at the recent AGM. A couple of countries still have reservations, but the majority likes the clarity: Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, the Americas and the hosts will each place a single side in LA. Any remaining berth is likely to be filled via a thin global qualifier, though the detail is still being knocked into shape ahead of the next quarterly meeting in October.
So, on current men’s T20 rankings, you would pencil in India, South Africa, England, Australia and the United States, plus a qualifier – and notice at once that Pakistan, New Zealand and Sri Lanka could all stay at home. A similar picture emerges on the women’s side, if not quite as stark.
Several administrators argue that the Olympic charter demands genuine geographic spread. One director told me privately the old rankings plan “never really passed the smell test”, though that line stopped short of appearing in the minutes.
The host issue remains fiddly. The men’s squad likely draws from Major League Cricket franchises, but many of those players are residents, not citizens. The ICC has asked USA Cricket for a firm timeline on naturalisation. The women’s team sit outside the top twenty and, as one official put it, “that’s awkward optics”. Some within the board say a host berth should be conditional on competitiveness; others counter that the home crowd deserve a local side, whatever its ranking.
The ECB, Cricket Scotland and Cricket Ireland have already formed a joint vehicle called Great Britain Cricket, clearing the way for players from the three boards to line up under the Union flag. West Indies is even trickier. Cricket West Indies wrote to the ICC in May with two possible fixes: a Caribbean play-off to decide a single entrant, or regional qualifiers blending West Indian territories with the ICC’s existing development zones. No verdict yet.
If the system does bed in, the world might be denied an India–Pakistan clash – admittedly a marketing headache, but one senior administrator shrugs it off. “This is the Olympics, not a bilateral series. Diversity trumps rivalry,” he said.
The final sign-off is expected in the autumn. Until then, lobbying continues behind closed doors and federations are doing their sums. One thing, though, seems locked in: the Olympic pathway will look nothing like the usual ICC tournament ladder, and a few heavyweight nations may have to watch from afar.
Speaking on BBC’s Test Match Special on Thursday, ECB chair Richard Thompson summed it up in typically dry style: “The beauty – and the danger – of the Olympics is that you don’t get there on reputation. You’ve got to qualify, simple as that.”
