Gilchrist’s Olympic dream

Adam Gilchrist has used the platform of the Cowdrey lecture to call for the inclusion of cricket at the Olympic Games. This has been done before, but the advent of Twenty20 cricket makes the proposition far more likely.

Cricket has appeared in the Olympics before – Great Britain beat a French team of English expatriates in Paris in 1900 – but it is safe to assume that its reappearance in the future would bare little similarity to a one-off, two innings per side contest that nearly ended in a draw.

An Olympic Twenty20 competition would also be radically different from its only other appearance in a major multi-sport event. South Africa won a 16-team, 50 over competition at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Malaysia.

That event proved cricket matches, intrinsically difficult to stage quickly because of their day-long duration, could be successfully held in a major Games, although Twenty20 will help condense any prospective tournament.

The other obstacle to cricket in the Olympics is its narrow appeal, narrow at least in the IOC’s eyes. Europe, United States and the Far East might be largely oblivious to cricket, but as Gilchrist pointed out, more than 20% of the world’s population live in a cricket-orientated region.

London 2012 would also have been the ideal opportunity to hold a cricket tournament in a country with cricketing interest. Tokyo 2016 might have less local interest.

Sports do not need universal appeal to be included in the Olympic program – a quick glance at the current sports reveals some with a pretty restricted target audience. Twenty20 cricket, with its appeal to non-cricket watchers, would surely catch on.

Cricket missed its opportunity to conquer the American television market last year, when the Stanford Super Series fell flat. An Olympic cricket competition would change that and the prospects appear good, as the green light has been given for it to become a demonstration sport.