Commonwealth Games keen to include cricket
Adrian Warner
Commonwealth Games organisers are keen to give cricket a long-term place in the event, especially with cricket-mad India bidding for the 2010 Games.
In an interview with Reuters, Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) chairman Mike Fennell said it would be difficult to get the limited overs discipline into the Games in the next four years but officials were keeping an "dialogue open" with the International Cricket Council (ICC) on the issue.
"For the next four to five years, it is very doubtful that it can be done because of a packed programme," Fennell said before Thursday's start to the Games in Manchester. "The ICC feel the cricket calendar is packed already.
"(But) We try to ensure that the programme reflects the Commonwealth. Netball and cricket are team sports like that. It should be ideal with one women's and one men's competition. In India it is a sport that would guarantee crowds."
One-day cricket was introduced at the last Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, together with other team sports such as hockey, netball and rugby union sevens. But while the other three sports are being contested in Manchester, cricket is not on the 17-discipline programme.
Organisers of the next Games in Melbourne in 2006 have decided to add basketball to the programme but cricket is unlikely to make it.
Last week the ICC discussed player burn-out at a meeting with captains of the leading test-playing nations in London. Cricket is keen to make sure players do not contest too many games but the Commonwealth Games option is still being considered.
Fennell said India was one of three countries which had expressed interest in staging the 2010 Games. Singapore and Canada are also expected to join the race. India was putting New Delhi forward as host city but the Canadian city had yet to be decided.
The venue will be chosen by the General Assembly of the CGF in a meeting in Jamaica in October-November next year.
Fennell refused to speculate on which city might win the vote. But Commonwealth sources said Canada was expected to launch a strong bid and India would need to back up their enthusiasm with detailed practical plans of their bid to have any chance of winning.
COMMONWEALTH FUTURE
The Games have been held only twice outside Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Britain. In addition to Kuala Lumpur they were held in Jamaica in 1966. Taking them to Delhi would be a huge boost to the Commonwealth's most populous country.
The Games, which first began as the British Empire Games in 1930, have done well to survive in the sports world of the 21st century where world championships in the leading sport of athletics are held every two years.
Fennell admitted that it was a "struggle" to compete with events where prize money was paid but said the CGF was looking at ways of getting long-term deals with worldwide sponsors, like the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
"Sponsors tend to go from games to games and the sponsors from Kuala Lumpur are not the sponsors in Manchester," he said. "We would like to copy the Olympic partnership philosophy and look for sponsors on a three-Games plan."
Britain has spent 170 million pounds ($267.9 million) on new venues for the Games and managed to persuade eight official sponsors and seven other partners to back the project. Some have largely domestic appeal but others are global.
But Fennell said: "It is not always an easy sell. The problem here in England is that sponsors do not always reach the level of satisfaction that they have wanted, such as with the Millennium Dome. Business fortunes have also fluctuated."
