An International Olympic Committee spokeswoman confirmed last night what most of us had already suspected - cricket has no chance of becoming an Olympic sport in the foreseeable future.

Speaking from the IOC's headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, the IOC Communications spokeswoman (who asked not to be identified), said that lack of female participation would prevent any application by cricket to being accepted into the IOC fold.

A sport must be played by females in at least 40 countries on three continents to be eligible. It must also have a single governing body for both sexes.

The spokeswoman also implied that the perception of cricket as a parochial British Empire past-time would hinder its chances of being accepted.

"It can't be local and it must be known to people all over the world," the IOC employee, speaking from IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland said. "For example, in Europe, cricket, I think, is only played in Britain (sic)."

Interestingly, she also added that cricket's idiosyncratic nature could count against it.

"It needs to be a sport that even if you don't know a lot about it, you are able to understand it. Triathlon was introduced into these last Games. Not everyone would know about triathlon but when you watch it you can understand it. I am not sure that anyone who didn't know about cricket would understand it."

(To those of you who say, 'Well, what about Greco-Roman wrestling,' it qualifies as a discipline of the more widely understood freestyle wrestling).

Similarly, the spokeswoman added that any sport applying for membership must be television friendly.

"I am not sure that is the case with cricket, which I understand takes four days. Television is very important because most of the funding comes from television rights."

This raises an important point. While of course, the four or five day version of cricket is not its only incarnation, would cricket officialdom or the cricketing public in general prefer to see cricket retain its present formats and played as a popular sport in a limited number of countries, rather than promote an abridged version of the game such as Super Eights or Cricket Max, which clearly has more potential for global penetration?

(In this edition of 'Beyond The Test World', former New Zealand Test captain, Martin Crowe argues the case for Cricket Max).

This issue does not just apply to gaining entry to the Olympic Games - it is relevant to any attempt cricket may make to enter sports markets traditionally preferring events of short duration.

Lastly, it was noticeable the spokesperson raised several misconceptions commonly associated with our game (it's only played in a limited number of countries; ignorance of abbreviated forms of the game, etc, etc). While this can be dismissed as one person's lack of knowledge, the spokeswoman unwittingly summarised the perception cricket has outside its tradtional boundaries and highlighted the need for cricket to further publicise itself. While cricket will have to wait some years to enter the Olympic arena, there is no reason for the International Cricket Council to delay taking the beneficial step of gaining membership of the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF).

As highlighted in the September 21 edition of BTTW, such a move would allow many national cricket associations to access government funding.

"It is not a difficult process," GAISF's Director General, Jean Claude Schupp said last night. "Mainly, you just need to demonstrate you are the governing body for a sport which organises and runs events for that sport, and be played in 30 countries."

Mr. Schupp said the ICC had spoken to GAISF "a couple of years ago, but didn't really seem very interested."

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