Cricket at the Summer Olympics

Vélodrome de Vincennes hosted the cricket matches at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Cricket was originally scheduled to be included in the inaugural 1896 Summer Olympics, which were held in Athens; cricket would have been the only team sport held at the Games. There were, however, insufficient entries and so no event was held.

The event was held at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris four years later but only two countries competed, Great Britain and hosts France. The French team was mostly represented by English expatriates, and it is officially considered a mixed team[1][2] while the English team was represented by Devon & Somerset Wanderers Cricket Club, so was not nationally selected. It is considered that few of the participants would have been good enough to play first-class cricket — only the British side had experience of eight such games in its side through Somerset's Montagu Toller and Alfred Bowerman.[3]

The match was played over two days with both 12-a-side teams batting two innings each and did not attract first-class status. England won the match by 158 runs to win the gold medal.[4][5] If the French had held out for five more minutes the game would have been declared a draw.[6] Knowledge of the game would have been lost but for the forethought of John Symes, a member of the victorious team, who kept a scorecard in his own writing.

A cricket tournament was scheduled for 1904 Summer Olympics held in St. Louis but was eventually cancelled.[7]

Poster of the only Olympic cricket match

Many of cricket's governing bodies, including the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), were long opposed to a return to the Olympics.[8] The ECB withdrew their opposition in 2015,[9] and in March 2017, it was reported that International Cricket Council chief Dave Richardson thought the "time is right" for Olympic cricket.[10] It was also reported that the opposition of the BCCI had softened.[11]

In October 2020, USA Cricket stated that it saw a proposed inclusion of cricket in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as a long-term goal.[12][13] In 2020, the BCCI in its Annual General Meeting decided to back the ICC's bid for inclusion of T20 cricket in 2028 after getting some clarifications from the International Olympic Committee.[14][15][16] In August 2021, the ICC confirmed its plans to bid for the inclusion of cricket at the Olympics, starting with the 2028 and 2032 games.[17]

On 9 October 2023, the 2028 Olympic organising committee announced that cricket was on the list of sports they wished to introduce.[18] On 13 October 2023, the IOC announced that the bid was accepted and placed under voting to finalize its inclusion in 2028 during the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai between 14 to 16 October 2023. It was confirmed on 16 October 2023 that cricket would be featured in the 2028 Olympics as only two voted against inclusion, including both men's and women's T20 tournaments.[19][20][21][22]

The United Kingdom competes at the Olympics as Great Britain with athletes from England, Scotland, Wales and those British Overseas Territories without their own Olympic team, while athletes from Northern Ireland can choose to represent either Great Britain or Ireland. In cricket, Scotland has its own team, Welsh players play for the England team, and the Ireland team represents all of Ireland. Great Britain may feature players eligible some ICC associates teams like Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Scotland and Turks and Caicos Islands.

The West Indies cricket team covers much of the Caribbean, which has twelve Olympic associations: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago and United States Virgin Islands. For example, at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, Curtly Ambrose and Richie Richardson represented Antigua and Barbuda. West Indies cricketers from Anguilla and Montserrat would be eligible for Great Britain at the Olympics, and those from Sint Maarten would represent the Netherlands.