IOC announces 2028 Olympic cricket venue

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed the venue of cricket matches for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics on Wednesday.

The matches will be held in Pomona, a city in the western part of the United States.

Announcing the venue, the LA28 organising committee stated, “Cricket (T20) is a hugely popular global sport and will be included in the LA28 Games. A temporary venue will be built at the Pomona Fairplex to host the cricket matches.”

Earlier plans had considered New York as a potential venue for the cricket matches— a city that hosted eight matches of the T20 World Cup last year.

The Olympic Games, often called ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’, is a grand gathering of global sports and top athletes.

Despite its worldwide popularity, cricket has been notably absent from the Olympics for a significant period.
The reasons for its exclusion have never been clearly articulated. However, there’s now hope as cricket is set to make a comeback at the Olympics after a long wait.

Cricket was last seen at the Olympics in 1900, where Great Britain won gold and the French Athletic Club Union won silver.

Since then, the sport has not featured in the global competition. Although cricket was included in the 1986 Athens Olympics, no matches were played due to an insufficient number of participating teams.

Efforts have been ongoing to bring cricket back to the Olympics. The ICC made attempts for its inclusion in the 2024 Olympics, but those efforts were unsuccessful.

Now, their efforts have come to fruition. Six teams each in the men’s and women’s categories will compete in the T20 format at the 2028 Olympics. Each team will have a maximum of 15 members.