RIO DE JANEIRO: The sight of cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar sitting in the stands on the first morning of the Rio Games rugby competition on Saturday was a reminder that at least one major international sport remains outside the Olympic embrace.

Accompanied by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach in the stands of the Deodoro Stadium, India’s greatest sporting icon watched the opening matches of a shortened version of a sport that has some parallels with his own.

Like rugby, the elite level of cricket is largely populated by a handful of former British colonies and the game is widely perceived as unfathomable by many outside that heartland.

Unlike rugby, however, cricket has been slow to take up the chance to return to the Olympic fold since Bach opened up opportunities for new sports to replace those considered unappealing to the younger demographic he wants to attract.

With the return of golf and rugby at the Rio Games, and with baseball and softball set to return in Tokyo in 2020, cricket, and the Indian subcontinent that provides the vast majority of its most fervent fans, represents a final frontier for the IOC.

Barring a fast fading memory of a once dominant hockey team and the odd shooting gold, India’s 1.2 billion people have had little to shout about at the Olympics for many a long year.

There are signs however that Bach’s accompanying Tendulkar to the rugby in Rio was only part of increasing IOC attempts to engage the sport that dominates India, and the country itself.

As recently as Thursday, Nita Ambani, an Indian businesswoman and owner of the Mumbai franchise in the hugely popular Indian Premier League cricket competition, was elected to the IOC.

For World Rugby’s chief executive Brett Gosper, whose sport returned to the Olympics for the first time in 92 years on Saturday, the potential benefits for cricket were clear.

‘FANTASTIC FORUM’

“Sachin was here for the whole session and loved it,” Gosper said.

Clashes with an already busy international schedule and a desire to protect its own television deals and tournaments have been behind cricket’s reluctance to engage with the Olympics.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) is yet to confirm whether it will push for the inclusion of its Twenty20 format of the game at the 2024 Olympic Games, but Tendulkar’s appearance at the rugby was striking.

“For them in cricket terms it’s interesting to see rugby’s journey into the Olympic and why that’s an interesting proposition for cricket,” said Gosper.

“If cricket has similar ambitions to rugby which is to take its footprint out of its traditional comfort zone then there’s nothing better than the Olympics to allow you to do that.

“Not just at the time of the Olympics, but in the whole qualification, development, the fact you’re on school curricula, the fact you get more money into those countries that normally probably wouldn’t be distributing much money to.

“I definitely think in terms of an expansive mentality, if that’s where cricket’s at, the Olympics would be a fantastic forum for them.” Gosper added that “cricket would be very good for the Olympics too”.

“Obviously it would bring out a very strong Indian audience, which is considerable, and they’d have to see if their Twenty20 format would suit the Olympics,” he said. “As an ambition, we can only endorse it.”

WOMEN FIRST

France won the first rugby match at the Olympics in 92 years — and the first ever for women — beating Spain 24-7 to begin the six-day sevens tournament.

Rugby sevens, the fast-pace, condensed form of the game, is the format for the sport’s return to the Olympic program for the first time since 1924, when the U.S. men won gold in the 15-a-side tournament.

After the first day, leading contenders New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Britain alongside France — who finished their day with a 40-7 rout of Kenya in Pool ‘B’ — had ensured qualification for the quarter-finals, each with a game to spare.

World series champions Australia closed out the day with an impressive 36-0 defeat of a physical Fiji side to top Pool ‘A’, while New Zealand showed ominous form in Pool ‘B’ with a 52-0 thumping of Kenya and a 31-5 victory over Spain.

Third seeds Canada were also in impressive form, keeping both Japan and Brazil scoreless in 45-0 and 38-0 victories that put them on top of Pool ‘C’.

Fiji caused the upset of the day, trumping the United States 12-7 with Bach watching, before losing to the Wallabies, who also had a 53-0 win over Colombia.

The United States also thrashed the Colombians 48-0 in their second match.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2016