Just heard about cricket Olympic dates getting confirmed which is awesome to hear though it's still a long way to go. Dates are July 12 - 29 2028 which is basically 3 freaking years from now.
Teams will participate in T20 events and medal matches will take place during the end phase. Historical stuff considering the fact that it's just the 2nd time cricket has been added to the Olympics since its inception.
It should have happened earlier, if cricket had been in the Olympics like football, then the number of cricket teams would have increased a lot. Now, there are probably 8 to 10 teams that play regular cricket, but when Olympic cricket is included, different countries of the world will participate there and those who do well will have the possibility of participating in tournaments like the World Cup. Since this is being done for the second time, we will expect it to happen every time and we can see new teams every season. The biggest reason for this is that football has many more teams participating and most of the countries compete hard and then qualify for the main stage of the World Cup. The same thing happens in cricket, that is, if every team has to qualify for the main stage of the World Cup through tough competition, then cricket will also become more popular.
Perhaps this year's edition has the potential to continue the tradition of the past as we can see that the return of cricket to the Olympics will create a great opportunity for the cricket boards. Obviously it can be said that if cricket, like football, had been included in the Olympics, it would have had a strong potential for growth.We are completely surprised to hear that cricket is getting a chance here again after 128 years, so perhaps Cricket's periodic attraction would have improved more if the game of cricket had been given regular opportunities in these few years. So I think that the return of cricket to the Olympics will transform it into a tough competition, just like football and it doesn't make sense to me to automatically select a few teams for this festive Olympics.