CRICKET-OLYMPICS-Organisers propose T20 tournament for LA28.

Cricket looks set to return to the Olympic Games after more than a century.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Monday that it was one of five sports that have been proposed for inclusion at the Games in the American city of Los Angeles in five years' time.

The proposal is to include the so-called 'gentleman's game', as well as baseball-softball, flag football (a limited-contact version of American football), lacrosse, and squash, a statement from the organisers indicated.

Following its discussion of the LA28 proposal, the Olympic Programme Commission of the IOC will issue a recommendation to the IOC Executive Board, which will present the proposal to the 141st IOC Session from October 15 to 17 in Mumbai, India, coincidentally where the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 is taking place.

'The Los Angeles 2028 Olympics' recommendation for cricket inclusion at the Games is a monumental step that could see more significant opportunities for cricket and the Caribbean community,' Cricket West Indies president, Dr Kishore Shallow said in a statement. 'I share my International Cricket Council (ICC) colleagues' enthusiasm about this progress and commend all stakeholders for advancing this ambition.'

If approved, the final LA28 event programme and number of athlete quotas in the additional sports will be finalised in the future.

Three of the five proposed sports, including cricket, have previously been contested at the Olympics, but unlike its only previous appearance at the 1900 Games in Paris, France, when a team from Britain beat a team representing the hosts, it will not be contested as a two innings-a-side competition.

The proposed format for cricket is Twenty20, one of the sport's newest and most spectator-friendly versions, with media reports indicating that the sport's world gorverning body recommended a six-team tournament for both men and women to the LA28 organising committee.

It was reported that the participating teams will comprise the top-six ranked sides in the ICC's men's and women's T20 rankings on a cut-off date, similar to the process used to determine the teams when cricket made its return after 24 years to the Commonwealth Games last year in the British city of Birmingham.

It was also reported that the ICC proposed T20s after both LA28 and the IOC emphasised the format must be one that featured a world championship (which ruled out the T10 or Hundred format), had a compact duration (which ruled out 50 overs-a-side...