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The Netherlands cricket team celebrate after defeating England in their Twenty20 World Cup cricket match at Lord's cricket ground in London, Friday, June, 5, 2009. AP Photo/Alastair Grant
Gilchrist’s idea of having Twenty20 cricket in the 2012 London Olympics is brilliant. In fact, soon after winning the bid to hold the 2012 Olympics in 2005, England had indicated that cricket would be included as an event. I am not aware of any progress since then.
Currently there are about twenty countries who have played cricket in World Cup events at Fifty50 or Twenty20 levels.
And with a T20 match taking under three hours to complete, it is a feasible and exciting prospect.
However, it will not be the first time, cricket was played in Olympics.
Did you know that cricket was included in the 1900 Paris Olympics? Four countries – Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium – showed interest. But the last two dropped out.
So the so-called final between Great Britain and France remains the only cricket match in Olympic history.
The historic match was played at Vincennes, France, on 19 and 20 August 1900. But both were glorified club teams.
Britain included players from Devon County Wanderers Club. And France fielded mostly ex-pat Englishmen living in France. They were members of the French Athletic Club.
For reasons difficult to understand even after over 100 years, Britain did not include Test cricketers CB Fry, Ranjitsinhji, AC MacLaren, Sydney Barnes, Colin Blythe, Wilfred Rhodes among others. The legendary WG Grace had retired a year ago aged 51.
Despite the absence of these stars, Great Britain was too good for the hosts, winning easily.
In fact, the British club cricketers gave the French a lesson on how to play le cricket. Here are the scores in brief:
Great Britain 117 and 5 declared for 145 (captain CBK Beachcroft 54, A. Bowerman 59) beat France 78 (FW Christian 7 wickets) and 26 (MH Toller 7 for 9) by 158 runs.
France claimed a silver medal after scoring a measly 104 runs for 20 wickets. Le cricket, indeed!
If cricket is included in the 2012 London Olympics, winning medals will not be that easy.
But will our money-conscious cricketers be game to play with little or no money offered?
Perhaps little has changed in over 100 years!