The chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Colin Graves, is hopeful that cricket will become an Olympic sport to help extend the game “throughout a number of countries”.
The ICC board confirmed this week that its chief executive, Dave Richardson, and Graves’s predecessor as ECB chairman, Giles Clarke, will meet representatives of the International Olympic Council (IOC) to discuss potentially including the sport in future Olympics after receiving “several approaches from multi-sport organisations”.
The issue is also due to be discussed at the next ECB board meeting and Graves, who succeeded Clarke earlier this year, believes it could be an important development for the sport.
“I think it should be an Olympic sport in one format or another,” he told Cricinfo.
“It’s extending the sport throughout a number of countries. Associates, and everybody, could play in the Olympics. I will be asking the board to support it.
“I’m not saying T20 is the way to do it. I don’t know. Somebody might come up with something entirely different – a 10-over competition, who knows? It’s fitting it into the schedule and the grounds, wherever the Olympics are held.”
Graves added: “We are having a board meeting with the ECB before Giles Clarke has that meeting with the Olympic Committee, so Giles Clarke will know where the ECB board is coming from. It’s not about personalities and what they think. It’s about what the ECB board think.”
Cricket was last included in the Olympics in 1900, when Great Britain – represented by Devon and Somerset Wanderers – beat France in the only match of the tournament by 158 runs.
