Cricket, meet the world. World, meet cricket!

Twenty20 cricket is already booming, with IPL driving the biggest part of the sport’s success outside the regular cricketing countries. From 2003, when it was initially launched, till today, this version of cricket holds the most prominent place in the hearts of both casual and the more devoted cricket fans. 

T20 has changed the way people view cricket, the way audiences enjoy cricket matches, and the overall attitude toward a sport, whose dominant -up to that time- formats were too exhaustive and too long even to watch. It has even changed the way people bet on cricket, giving birth to new and more attractive markets for punters and generating a whole new realm of betting apps, such as the ball to ball betting app or other cricket-focused platforms. Overall, T20 has reintroduced cricket to audiences and rearranged people’s relationships with the sport. 

In 2028, cricket will be included in the Los Angeles Olympic Games. And guess what! Not any cricket, but T20 cricket is the chosen format to be played at LA28. This doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone, since it is the only workable and functional version of the sport to be part of a mega event that features 36 different sports in nearly two weeks. If the Olympic Games calendar is to have room for all sports, it can’t feature any other cricket format, but the Twenty20 format. It is the only one that doesn’t last from a minimum of seven hours to up to five days…

Cricket’s inclusion at the Olympic Games was not a bed of roses for the ICC. It had been stalled for too many years and met with much opposition, but the Los Angeles Olympic Committee decided to give it a shot and have cricket in its official list of games for the summer of 2028. 

The year 2028 is going to mark the beginning of a new era for cricket. The world’s eyes have already turned to cricket from the moment it was announced that it would be played in the Games, and its popularity went up immediately. But the real deal is going to be four years from now when cricket is going to be introduced – or better, re-introduced, to the whole world. When the majority of people on this planet will get to meet how brilliant, fabulous, and amazing cricket is. Cricket, meet the world. World, meet cricket!

The shortest, most exciting, most fun, and at the same time, equally demanding format of cricket will get to everybody’s house through the broadcasting of the Olympic Games in the summer of 2028. It’s going to reach mass audiences at the speed of light and individuals will get to familiarize themselves with the game that now concerns more than 2.5 billions people on earth, only it is not as widely popular as other global sports like basketball, tennis or football. 

The ICC’s goal has always been to move cricket closer to becoming a truly global sport. Adopting a shorter format was the first of many efforts to establish cricket in the world’s sports scene and probably the first officially recognizable step to make cricket more appealing to the eyes of the sport’s newbies as well as more interesting and less boring in the eyes of fans. This format gave a breath of fresh air to a sport that has been around us for ages, but which had only had a limited reach so far, and revitalized the game for nearly everyone who was quite disappointed by its exhaustive, long-lasting playtime. 

But what is going to take cricket to an entirely new level is the Olympic Games. We’re going to witness the transformation of the sport, from one concerning the traditional cricketing countries to one being relevant to more and more nations, irrespective of their cricket history. At last, the world is going to have a chance to meet cricket and learn to appreciate its beauty! 

The Los Angeles 2028 Games will be the starting point for this transformation and even though this won’t be the first time cricket is making it to the Olympics -it was also part of the Paris 1900 Games–  it is certainly going to be an absolute success this time.