Eoin Morgan Calls For Inclusion Of T10 In The Olympics

England’s limited-overs captain Eoin Morgan has said that T10 should be the format cricket should attempt to get included in the Olympics. The question of whether cricket could be included in the Olympics is being discussed from decades.

Cricket has featured in the Olympics only once so far – the 1900 Summer Olympics with only a men’s contest. Great Britain had won the gold medal in cricket’s only appearance at the Olympics. In fact, only two cricket teams – Great Britain and hosts France – had competed in the 1900 Olympics.

Cricket was originally scheduled to be included in the inaugural 1896 Summer Olympics. Had that happened, cricket would have been the only team sport held at the Games.  There were, however, insufficient entries and so no event was held. Since 1900, cricket has not appeared in the mega event but the discussion over the same has been always there.

The length of the game has always been a big factor behind cricket not becoming an Olympics sport. And Eoin Morgan believes that the short length of a T10 tournament is one of the key reasons it would make a good fit for a multi-sport competition.

“The one thing that T10 offers above the three formats that makes it so appealing to an Olympic games or a Commonwealth games is the fact that you can play a whole tournament in the space of 10 days,” Eoin Morgan was quoted as saying by Wisden.

One of the reasons the governing body wants the game in Olympics is to attract new audience. As far as Eoin Morgan is concerned, the World Cup-winner believes that that the short, sharp nature of T10 makes it perfect for capturing a newcomer’s attention.

“When you can play a cricket tournament in eight-10 days it really does make it appealing, and on top of that it really would be extremely entertaining,” he said.

“We’ve seen in all of the seasons of the Abu Dhabi T10 so far, it’s been exceptionally entertaining. There was that factor that if you flick the TV on you would see something entertaining, and you would see a number of icons of the game playing throughout the day.

“Another one of the appealing things about the tournament over one of the other three formats is that [with the other formats] when you purchase a ticket or you turn the TV for a certain day’s play in cricket you might get to watch your favourite batsman or one hero player, whereas with T10 you get to have a look at three, maybe even four games at a push on one particular day, and every team has an icon or one high-prized professional player that people want to come and watch, that’s extremely appealing,” he added.

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