After an absence of 128 years, cricket is set to make its return to the Olympic Games, with the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) jointly confirming the qualification system for the sport’s appearance at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cricket was last featured at the Olympics in 1900, when a one-off match between Great Britain and France was played at the Paris Games. The sport will now return as part of LA28, with six men’s teams and six women’s teams set to compete in T20 tournaments, each squad limited to a maximum of 15 players. In total, 180 athletes \u2014 90 men and 90 women \u2014 will take part, with cricket’s qualification framework designed to ensure representation from across Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the qualification system released jointly by the two bodies, five of the six places in the men’s event will be determined through ICC rankings, while the sixth and final spot will be decided through a dedicated Olympic qualifying tournament. Host nation USA stands to gain automatic qualification provided it remains within the top 15 of the global rankings during the qualification window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pathway for the women’s event follows a different structure. Rather than relying solely on rankings, the ongoing ICC Women’s T20 World Cup is serving as the primary qualifying event, with the top-ranked eligible side from each of four different continents earning direct qualification once the tournament concludes. Based on results from the Women’s World Cup so far, India, Australia, South Africa and England have already secured their places for the Los Angeles Games. As with the men’s event, the United States will also qualify automatically for the women’s competition, subject to meeting the same top-15 ranking requirement, while the remaining spot will be contested through a separate global qualifying tournament scheduled for 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two-time world champions West Indies will not receive a direct route to that global qualifier and will instead first need to navigate a regional Caribbean qualifying event in order to advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking on the development, ICC Chairman Jay Shah described cricket’s return to the Olympic stage as a historic moment for the sport, adding that Olympic exposure would help cricket gain wider global visibility and recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 This report draws on information released by the ICC and IOC, as reported by ARY News and other outlets.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After an absence of 128 years, cricket is set to make its return to the Olympic Games, with the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) jointly confirming the qualification system for the sport’s appearance at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Cricket was last featured at the Olympics in 1900, when a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3515,"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513\/revisions\/3515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publicpublication.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}