ICC give blessing to sport’s expansion into multi-sport games, with Olympics also on agenda
Cricket could be included at the 2023 Africa Games as the ICC more and more looks to multi-sport events so that you can grow the game.
ESPNcricinfo understands the ICC Africa office have been in discussions with the native organising committee in Ghana as a way to including cricket at the event. A delegation, including officials from the ICC, the Ghana Cricket Organization and the Ghana Ministry of Sports, has visited the proposed venues to make sure the requisite facilities could be given.
The feedback is understood to have been overwhelmingly positive, though cricket’s inclusion has not been confirmed at this stage.
If it comes to fruition or not, the move underlines the ICC’s it seems that new-found desire to embrace multi-sports games. The inclusion of women’s cricket has already been confirmed for the Commonwealth Games of 2022, while there is increasing momentum for a return to The Olympics. The new ECB chair, Ian Watmore, is understood to be a eager advocate of the sort of move and will shortly be placed in charge of an ICC sub-committee with a remit to explore the possibilities. Cricket’s inclusion as early as 2028, when the Olympics return to Los Angeles, remains conceivable.
There has long been a starvation among ICC Associate members to include cricket in the Olympics, in specific. It would, they argue, lead to greater exposure for the sport in their individual nations and open up new avenues of public underwriting. But there was resistance from some full member nations who have expressed concern that the period of time required for the Olympics would eat into the time to be had for bilateral series and quite a lot of national T20 tournaments.
An increasing number of, then again, there was an understanding at the ICC that multi-sport games would supply cricket with both a shop-window for potential new supporters and increase competition and commercial opportunities for its members. With the ECB, who consider it would supply impetus for the growth of the women’s game in specific, now broadly at the back of the idea, one of the crucial impediments towards progress have been removed.
George Dobell is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo