'Ultimate win-win': Global impact brings Olympics, cricket back together again
CBC
After more than a century and now with an estimated 2.5 billion fans worldwide — cricket is returning to the Olympics.
With its dynamic, faster-paced T20 format, the world's second most popular sport was added to the 2028 Los Angeles Games program by the International Olympic Committee on Monday along with lacrosse, baseball-softball, flag football and squash.
"Having cricket in the Olympics means an interaction of a global audience," Canadian men's cricket team captain Saad Bin Zafar told CBC Sports. "Cricket has a huge fan following outside North America. [The] Olympics has a huge fan following across the world and [it's now] an interaction of two different fan bases merging into one.
The decision regarding cricket's inclusion to the Olympics for the first time since 1900 — the sport's only appearance at a Games — was confirmed by the IOC's full membership at a meeting in Mumbai, India.
"We're looking forward to working with Cricket Canada," said Canadian Olympic Committee CEO and secretary general David Shoemaker. "It's a sport that's very much played by and embraced by new Canadians. The more we can make Team Canada look like Canada, that's really important to me personally and to us as an organization."
According to Statistics Canada, 500,000 immigrants arrived in the country between 2015-2020 from countries where cricket is the national sport or has national representation.
WATCH | Canadian cricketer Rayyan Pathan explains T20 format:
At a previous meeting ahead of the IOC vote on Monday, Los Angeles 2028 sports director Niccolo Campriani revealed that cricket was "an easy one to pitch" to the Olympic body.
"Think [about] my friend here Virat [Kohli]. He's the third-most followed athlete in the world on social media with 340 million followers. That's more than LeBron James, Tom Brady and Tiger Woods combined. This is the ultimate win-win," Campriani said.
Kohli is currently competing for hosts India at the One Day International Men's Cricket World Cup — one of the most watched sporting events in the world and the flagship contest for the sport. The International Cricket Council (ICC) figures show live coverage of the 2019 tournament reached a global cumulative average audience of 1.6 billion viewers.
WATCH | Canadian cricket star Saad Bin Zafar looks back on historic year:
According to The Associated Press, India — the world's most populous country — is now expected to increase the value of its broadcasting rights for the Olympic body by more than $100 million US.
For 2022-24, Indian media company Viacom18 had purchased the rights for $31 million US, according to The Economic Times.
Boundaries North CEO Rahul Srinivasan believes ICC associate members like Canada, and specifically women's cricket, will also profit from the sport's Olympic inclusion.
When a teenaged Chloe Primerano made her debut on the Canadian women’s hockey team last season, Jocelyne Larocque was often the steady force beside her on the blue line.
The Vancouver Canucks announced Friday that they have traded captain Quinn Hughes to the Minnesota Wild.
Canada's Kevin Drury battled his way to a gold medal that left him in tears at a World Cup ski cross event on Friday in Val Thorens, France.
Soccer fans have accused FIFA of a "monumental betrayal" after latest prices for World Cup tickets began to circulate on Thursday.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is “disappointed” that the main arena slated to host ice hockey at February’s Olympics isn’t yet completed with less than two months to go before the Games are scheduled to be played.
A two-year suspension from competitive swimming has forced Penny Oleksiak to answer questions about drug use, train by herself in public pools and defend her legacy as Canada’s most decorated female Olympian.
Hockey, one of the premier events at the Winter Olympics and one that is welcoming NHL players back for the first time in more than a decade, will take place on ice shorter than NHL-regulation size.
Summer McIntosh capped swimming’s U.S. Open with the event record in the women’s 200-metre butterfly on Saturday in Austin, Texas.
Some bronze medals are worth their weight in gold. Valerie Grenier's third-place finish in women's giant slalom at the Mont-Tremblant World Cup certainly fits that category.
The men’s World Cup draw in Washington D.C. was going well for Canada until Pot 4.
The draw for the 2026 World Cup takes place Friday at 12 p.m. ET at the Kennedy Center in Washington, for the purpose of dividing the 48-team field into 12 groups of four. Once the tournament starts, 32 teams will advance from those preliminary groups to the single-elimination knockout rounds.
The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., buzzed with activity and speculation on Thursday in advance of Friday’s all-important draw for the 2026 men’s World Cup.
By the time the management group for the Canadian men’s national hockey team emerges from marathon meetings on Tuesday, as much as 80 per cent of the roster going to Italy next February should be written in pen.