ECB and Cricket Scotland in talks over LA28 Team GB

The ECB and Cricket Scotland have opened talks about plans to field men's and women's Team GB cricket teams at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Cricket will return to the Olympics for the first time since 1900 after its inclusion was ratified late last year. Details are yet to be confirmed but the ICC has proposed six-team T20 tournaments for both the women's and men's competitions, which are both expected to last around a week and will likely be played consecutively rather than simultaneously.

Qualification details are also yet to be confirmed but the ICC's T20I rankings will be used in some capacity. Most countries will compete in their usual guise but if England qualify then they will play as Great Britain, in line with the rest of the Olympics. It opens up the possibility of some Scottish players competing, such as Brandon McMullen or Sarah and Kathryn Bryce.

The ECB and Cricket Scotland have held preliminary discussions about working together on proposed Team GB cricket teams. Cricket Scotland are pushing for active involvement in their running and are keen to contribute players and staff, but the ECB will be the teams' nominated governing body.

"With the Los Angeles Olympics four years away, it's very early stages, but we're talking to Team GB and Cricket Scotland about the next steps we need to take," an ECB spokesperson told ESPNcricinfo.

"Once again Great Britain's Olympians have captured the national imagination with their exploits in Paris this year, and we look forward to working together to compete when cricket returns to the Olympic stage in 2028.

"Along with England and Wales hosting Women's and Men's [T20] World Cups in 2026 and 2030, it's another great opportunity to grow the game and inspire more people to develop a love for cricket."

Andy Anson, the chief executive of the British Olympic Association, said on Monday: "We've got good experience in golf, in rugby and in women's football, of how the Four Nations [England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland] can come together and nominate one country to be the main governing body and work with the other countries. So I think cricket will be the same."

Anson, who is also Lancashire's chairman, added: "The ECB will be at the centre of that. They'll have to work with Cricket Scotland to make sure that happens properly. We will help them sign agreements to come together and create a single national governing body, as we have done in those other sports. We are working very closely with the ECB to make them become the fully fledged National Olympic Committee member."

Team GB is officially the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team, and athletes from Northern Ireland can choose to compete for either Team GB or Ireland. But since cricket is organised on an all-Ireland basis, leading Northern Irish cricketers such as Mark Adair and Paul Stirling are highly unlikely to nominate themselves for Team GB.

The venue for the cricket events at the 2028 Olympics is yet to be confirmed. Los Angeles Knight Riders and Major League Cricket have plans to build a stadium in Great Park in Irvine, while the Oakland Coliseum has also been mooted as an option.

West Indies' potential involvement also raises some complications, though there is recent precedent from the 2022 Commonwealth Games. West Indies' T20I ranking ensured they qualified for the women's cricket event, and they were represented by Barbados as the winners of the most recent edition of the Women's T20 Blaze.

Involvement in the Olympics - which will take place in the second half of July - will add to an incredibly busy 2028 summer for England's men, which is already due to feature six Tests and white-ball tours from Australia and India.