~snip~
Good luck, to you and all of us.
Because even T-20 format seems long to me when i look at from Olympic's perspective.
Normally one T-20 world cup takes around 28ish days to finish with 12-16 teams. now imagine you are trying to fit this event in 20 days event which is Olympics. to make matter worse let's say minimum 20 cricket teams participating in Olympics, seems very tight schedule to me, in the end players might want to suicide for sure.
If the ICC wants to accommodate cricket then they can and for the development of cricket this is the best option they have and yet they have not shown much interest,
Its not that ICC don't want this. But some cricket board has their eyes on short-term benefits, call it short sighted attitude. (ECB-BCCI)
ECB - Earlier they were not in favor of this move because according to them Olympics and their county season schedule always clash. ICC told ECB to %$#@ off and told them to deal with it as Olympic comes after 4 years and only for 2 weeks or so...
BCCI - They are major roadblock atm and International Olympic Council (IOC) want all major countries especially India at any cost otherwise they are not interested in the cricket. BCCI has couple of serious concerns. ICC and BCCI both are working on it.
- NADA (National Anti Doping Agency) -Indian cricketers/BCCI and Indian Doping agency had some misunderstanding (They wanted to control every cricketer all the time) and NADA record is not good but things are working fine atm as both bodies are working together on trial basis.
- IOC (Indian Olympic Commission) -BCCI don't want to lose autonomy to them, Which seems real concern as BCCI did all the hard work and made billion dollar product from scratch. And IOC sucks anyway, too much politics with shitty subcontinent bureaucracy. Who knows if in future they introduce quota/reservation in cricket too?
if they include cricket then they can follow the same path as football with qualification tournaments and 16 teams with a group stage of 4 group and then a knockout stage. Even if cricket is accepted i do not think that the top teams will send their best team to represent as it will clash with the regular schedule and at best they will send a second string team.
As far as i know football in the Olympic is not big thing per se because majority of the players are required to be under 23 age. if this happens with cricket then its not real deal IMO. Schedule and dividing groups are open to discussion, they are more than capable of handling this issue so its not a big deal.