LONDON: The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Cricket Scotland have begun discussions over the formation of a joint Britain cricket team ahead of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, the Scottish board’s chief executive Trudy Lindblade said on Friday.

Cricket, one of the five new sports in Los Angeles, will return to the Olympics after 128 years, featuring six teams each in the men’s and women’s competitions in the 20-overs format.

England are second and third in the women’s and men’s Twenty20 rankings respectively. Scotland are not in the top 10 in either category.

“We have a really good working relationship with the ECB, so we have been in talks with them and [we’re] in the process of establishing a Team GB cricket entity,” Lindblade told the BBC.

“That’s what’s required by the British Olympic Association (BOA) for a British team to compete at the Olympic Games. So it’s really interesting, the six teams for us, we would have an opportunity through the GB concept... So, exciting times, and we’ll continue to liaise with the ECB and our colleagues at LA 2028 and ICC. It will be interesting.”

Athletes from the United Kingdom usually compete at the Olympics as part of a combined Britain team.

Among the notable exceptions is men’s football, where a lack of agreement between individual nations has led to Britain not fielding a team in recent decades, apart from at the London Games in 2012.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2025