According to ESPNCricinfo, cricket will not be included in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games scheduled for July 23- August 2, 2026.
This time, the list is quite short, which has only 10 disciplines and Cricket does not come in the list which returned during the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham thanks to a women’s T20 tournament after it last featured in Kuala Lumpur CWG in 1998. Australia won the competition after narrowly edging in the finals that were hosted against India captained by Harmanpreet Kaur. The Australian squad was led by the legendary Meg Lanning who has won a dozen World Cup titles.
No reasons have been provided as such for the exclusion of the sport from the list of Games along with field hockey, badminton, shooting, wrestling amongst others.
“2026 Games will act as a template for the Commonwealth Games of the future – as an interesting first phase in that our aim is to reset and reshape the Games, and do it together in a way that is low cost, low carbon, and high social value – allowing greater numbers of countries to host,” said CWG CEO Katie Sadleir as quoted by ESPNCricinfo.
Sadleir’s view might be spot on which indicates there is due to a lot of cost cutting which probably explains the highly shrunk CWG 2026.
This comes when cricket is all set to return to the Olympic stage for the Los Angeles edition in 2028 after a gap of 128 years. Cricket was last played in the Olympics in 1900 and Great Britain won the cricket gold medal. Back then it was in traditional format but this time N GB will be competing in the T20 format at the LA Olympics.
Last year cricket was reintroduced at the Asian Games held at Hangzhou after a gap of 2014. This time men and women teams of different nations competed in a multi nation T20 tournament format. India grabbed all the gold medals while Kabul and Bangladesh ended with silver and bronze medals respectively on the men’s side. In the women’s competition Sri Lanka and Bangladesh won the silver and bronze respectively.
The expansion of cricket into the Olympic games has just been approved during the most recently held, 141st session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Mumbai, which was in October of the past year. In reference to the sport’s comeback, Niccolo Campriani, who is the director of the LA2028 local organizing committee, said: “Some of you might be wondering why baseball is so popular in LA.
“There has been a commitment made in growing cricket in the United states which has already began with the management of the first Major League cricket season just last year and it surpassed every expectation. And then the men’s T20 World Cup in 2024 goes to the US and the West Indies,” he ended.
Keep an eye out for new developments on the 2027 ICC cricket world cup! Read now to learn why cricket was omitted from the list of sports to be played at the 2026 Commonwealth Games and how cricket will be affected.