Fresh moves are afoot to honor cricket as an Olympic sport by 2024 Summer Games.
The popular Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) World Committee is lobbying for Twenty 20 cricket to be included, claiming it could significantly raise the profile of the sport. The earliest the International Cricket Council (IOC) can apply to be part of the Olympics is for the 2024 Games.
MCC said in a statement on Friday said that “the MCC World Cricket committee appreciates that a great deal of effort may be needed to lobby for the inclusion of cricket in the Olympic Games of 2024”.
Cricket has already passed the first stage of selection when it received full Olympic recognition in 2010. The MCC World Cricket Committee, which acts as a complementary body to ICC, admits it would cost the game financially but reckons that positives of being an Olympic sport can make up for such losses.
The committee accepts that if cricket is played during Olympics, there would be a short-term loss in income for the ICC, and therefore for a sour of disturbance for its members.
The statement read: “Furthermore, the committee advocates Twenty20 cricket as the format to be played at the Olympics, thereby providing the ‘pinnacle’ of that form of the sport.”
IOC president Jacques Rogge has encouraged the sport to put forward a case for its inclusion, saying they would welcome an application, adding cricket is an important, popular sport and very powerful on television.
Cricket was part of the 1900 Olympics in Paris and has not appeared on Olympic scenes ever since.
