T20 Cricket in the 2028 Olympics to be a six-team competition for both men’s as well as the women’s disciplines.
T20 Cricket, the latest entrant into the Olympic Games, has announced that both the men’s and women’s disciplines will be 6-team events.
The official program, which was issued on Wednesday, will allocate 90 athlete quotas for each category, and the teams will be required to designate 15-member lineups.
The requirements for Olympic qualification are still unclear.
There would be fewer qualifying spots available if the USA, the home team, received direct qualification. Since the Caribbean islands compete as independent nations at the Olympic Games, much as they do at the Commonwealth Games, there is also the issue of who will represent the West Indies.
For instance, Barbados participated in Birmingham 2022 when women’s T20 cricket was included. Barbados was chosen, and the West Indies were direct qualifiers.
The International Olympic Committee’s members approved the request to add cricket to the Olympic Games in October 2023 in Mumbai, confirming the sport’s return to the Games following a brief presence in Paris in 1900.
It has officially been announced that all team sports at LA28 will be six-team competitions in both the men’s and women’s divisions. According to the T20I rankings at a deadline, the ICC had recommended in its submission to LA28 that the six sides be shortlisted. Although it hasn’t been made yet, the final qualification decision is anticipated this year.
On the question of USA, who are not an ICC Full Member yet, Kit McConnell, the IOC’s sports director, had said in October 2023, “Normally, the host country is one of the teams in the team sports, and then we look at a balance of global strength and regional representation, and try and find that balance within the available quota as well.”