Cricket at LA28: both men's and women's events to be six-team contests

T20 cricket, one of five new disciplines at the next Olympic Games, in Los Angeles in 2028, will have six-team competitions in both the men's and the women's categories. The teams will have to name 15-member squads, with the official programme, released on Wednesday, allocating 90 athlete quotas for each category.

There is no clarity yet on the qualification criteria for the Olympic Games.

If USA, as the home team, get direct qualification, that would leave fewer qualifying slots. There is also the question of who will represent the West Indies, since the islands in the Caribbean participate as separate countries at Olympic Games, as they do at the Commonwealth Games. At Birmingham 2022, for example, when women's T20 cricket was included, Barbados took part. West Indies were direct qualifiers, and Barbados were selected because they were the champions of the West Indies' regional competition of the time - the Twenty20 Blaze.

Cricket's return to the Olympic Games after a fleeting appearance in Paris 1900 was confirmed when the proposal to include it was rubber stamped by the International Olympic Committee's members in October 2023 in Mumbai.

At the time, it was reported that all team sports at LA28 would be six-team events in both men and women's categories, which has been confirmed now. In its proposal to LA28, the ICC had suggested the six teams be shortlisted based on the T20I rankings at a cut-off date. The final call on qualification, while not taken yet, is expected to be made this year.

On the question of USA, who are not an ICC Full Member yet, Kit McConnell, the IOC's sports director, had said in October 2023, "Normally, the host country is one of the teams in the team sports, and then we look at a balance of global strength and regional representation, and try and find that balance within the available quota as well."