The cricket tournament at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028 will be played at a temporary stadium in Pomona, a southern Californian city about an hour’s drive from the athletes’ village.
A source close to the LA 2028 organising committee told My Newspaper Sport that a number of potential venues were explored during the planning stage.
That included holding the event in a city on the East Coast of the United States, such as New York, where time zones would be more appealing to the sizable television market in India.
However, it was said to be a “priority” for organisers to keep thesix-team eventat a venue within Los Angeles County which also met financial and logistical criteria.
A desire for cricket’s top players to stay at the athletes’ village, based at the University of California, and rub shoulders with fellow Olympians meant other venues were overlooked.
That included the Oakland Coliseum, the former home of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which is beingadapted for cricketand will host games in Major League Cricket – the country’s T20 franchise league – later this year.
The site chosen for the event in Pomona is the Fairgrounds, officially know as Fairplex, which has held the Los Angeles County Fair since 1922 and is a year-round venue for concerts, trade shows, sports and cultural events.
A purpose-built cricket stadium will be constructed on the site for the Games and then disassembled after the event has finished, in a similar manner to theground used in New Yorkfor last year’s T20 World Cup.
LA 2028 officials are understood to have visited the Fairplex two months ago for a final inspection before an agreement was reached with the non-profit organisation who administer the 500-acre site.
Fairplex has an existing grandstand, which was built in 1932 and holds 8,000 spectators. It is set to be renovated this year, but it is not yet certain if this will be incorporated into stadium plans.
The site has previously held concerts for between 40,000 and 60,000 people.
The International Cricket Council (ICC), International Olympic Committee (IOC) and LA 2028 organising committee worked together over the choice of the venue.
However, it is understood LA 2028 organisers and the IOC had the final say.
ICC chair Jay Shah said he “looked forward to collaborating” with the IOC to make “cricket a huge success there”.
“It will be a fantastic opportunity to expand traditional boundaries when it features in the Olympics in the fast-paced, exciting T20 format that should appeal to new audiences,” said Shah.
The prospect of a temporary venue for matches will once again raise concerns over the use of drop-in pitches.
For the 2024 T20 World Cup, which was co-hosted by the United States, an eye-catching 34,000-seat pop-up stadium was built in New York.
However, the drop-in pitches at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in Eisenhower Park cameunder intense scrutiny after they played poorly.
Cricket’s only previous appearance at the Olympics was at Paris 1900, when Great Britain won by 158 runs against France in a one-off final, after the Netherlands and Belgium withdrew.
The England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to have held preliminary talks with Cricket Scotland about plans to field a TeamGB side, with the ICC set to determine the qualification process for the Games.
