Scots target place at 2022 CW Games
CRICKET SCOTLAND have pledged to fight for a berth at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham after it was confirmed women’s Twenty20 will be included in the event programme.
It joins beach volleyball and para table tennis as late additions following an informal pitching process.
With little appetite for a return for men’s cricket to the Games for the first time since 1998, eight women’s teams will feature with more medals on offer to females than males across the total of 19 sports.
“When we started to look at the development of sport in the Commonwealth, the success women’s cricket has had is only next to women’s football in terms of resonance,” said Commonwealth Games Federation chief executive David Grevemberg.
“What we will look at is how we preserve the quality of competition and get good universal representation. That’s really the balancing act. It’s an eight-team tournament so there are constraints in numbers. There will be a competitive process to go through, which could be rankings or other selection standards.”
It adds an extra incentive for Scotland to win a place at the 2020 World Twenty20 through this month’s qualification tournament on Tayside. With England certain of a spot at its own Commonwealths, drawing up the remaining invites will be complicated by the status of West Indies and Ireland, who sit above the Wildcats in the rankings but who would not be able to participate in their current pan-national guise.
That could give the Scots an unexpected opportunity, Cricket Scotland chief executive Malcolm Cannon believes, with the International Cricket Council likely to make the final call.
“We’ve already opened dialogue with Commonwealth Games Scotland and the ICC board,” he said. “We would love to play, and have a chance. We’re ranked eleventh in the world and being in a Games would open up the kind of additional funding from Sportscotland that we’ve not previously had access to.”
There remains the threat of an Indian boycott following the controversial decision by Birmingham 2022 chiefs to wipe shooting from the Games slate.
A lack of suitable facilities was cited as the main reason to drop a sport that has featured at every edition since 1974.
But, with Indian shooters accounting for 16 of their country’s 66 medals, including seven golds, at last year’s Games in Gold Coast, CGF chairwoman Louise Martin is to lead an attempt to avoid a crisis.
“We’ll do everything we can to encourage India to participate at Birmingham 2022,” she said.
We’ve already opened dialogue. We would love to play, and have a chance