Cricket is set to be a part of the Asian Games in Japan next year. A formal confirmation to this effect will come during this week’s meetings between the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) and the organising committee (AINAGOC) of the Aichi-Nagoya Games. The 20th Asian Games will be held next year, from September 19 to October 4.

“The OCA Board will still need to approve it. Although we think that is just a formality. But until they do it is not 100 percent,” a Japan Cricket Association (JCA) official told Cricbuzz on Wednesday (April 30) ahead of the meetings. An OCA statement said “the meeting will run from Wednesday, April 30 to Friday, May 2, with the 3rd OCA Coordination Committee Meeting taking place over two days on May 1-2.”

Cricket will be one of the 41 sports at the Games and 15,000 athletes and officials from the OCA’s 45 National Olympic Committees will be part of it. The Indian men’s and women’s teams are the defending gold medallists, having won the yellow medals in the 2022 Asian Games held in Hangzhou, China, from September 19 to October 7, 2023. The Games, one may recall, had to be delayed due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

A statement by the OCA says, “The latest development in the compilation of the sports programme came at the 41st meeting of the AINAGOC Board of Directors at Nagoya City Hall on Monday, April 28, when cricket and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) were both formally approved.” Like last time, cricket will be played in the T20 format. The exact number of teams taking part will be decided during this week’s meetings. In the Hangzhou Games, 14 men and nine women teams featured in the competition.

The big question mark over the games is what will be the venue and whether the organisers will opt for a modular stadium like the ICC had done for the New York Games of last year’s Twenty20 World Cup. The JCA official said this will be decided during the meetings.

“The venue for cricket will be in Aichi prefecture but the exact location has not been decided. Interest will be high, not only because of cricket’s popularity in South Asia in particular but also because the T20 (20 overs per side) format will be included in the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028. This will be cricket’s first appearance in the Olympics since 1900 in Paris, where Great Britain beat France by 158 runs in the final of the two-team tournament,” the OCA statement says.