Cricket at Olympics is a hot subject that is being bartered around at present. Many a player including former Australian legendary wicket-keeper Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, Indian batting ace Sourav Ganguly and even our own living legend Kumar Sangakkara have endorsed the concept vociferously.

Being the cradle of the game of cricket, there were many a school of thought that cricket would be a part of the 2012 London Olympics. But according to Hemasiri Fernando who is an executive committee member of the Asian IOC, besides being the head of the Lankan segment of it thinks that cricket is at least twenty years away from being a part of the Olympics for the second time. Cricket was last part of the Olympics in Paris in 1900 when Great Britain beat France to take the gold medal.

Hemasiri Fernando was of the view that if cricket is to be included at the Olympics it should be first be a permanent feature of the other mega sporting events such as the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games. He said “I cannot see cricket being included in the Olympic list at least for the next twenty years. Cricket was a part of the 1998 XVI Commonwealth Games which were held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from September 11 to September 21, but then went out of the list thereafter. So much so Cricket is not a part of the Commonwealth Games of 2010 which will be held in India. As you know cricket is the most popular game by far in that country”.

The 2010 Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held in Delhi, India between October 3 and October 14.

Nevertheless almost a month later the 16th Asian Games (also known as the XVI Asiad) will be held in Guangzhou, China from November 12 to November 27, 2010, and cricket will be a feature.

At the same time, in 2010, literally there would be two tournaments in one year for the crown of cricket in Asia. First in May, the Asia Cup tournament will be held in the United Arab Emirates while the Asian Games cricket will be held in November in China.

At present games will conduct fifty-overs-a-side matches. However, it seems that there is a strong lobby that it should be a more fashionable twenty20 version.

But, according to the ICC Future Tours Programme the three Asian giants will be engaged otherwise. In November 2010 the Lankan Cricket authorities will be busy hosting the West Indies for a 3 Test 5 ODI tussle. India will be engaged in a tussle against Australia while Pakistan are taking on South Africa. This points that the inaugural Asian Games Cricket for the three giants would be ‘A’ team affairs. As for Bangladesh the other full member might field their full strength team in a bid to capture their first international cricket achievement – which would be an Asian Games “gold’. SRP