SINGAPORE – The inclusion of cricket, squash, baseball and softball in the Los Angeles 2028 programme has bowled over the local community, who say being part of the Olympics will galvanise these sports.
The International Olympic Committee announced in Mumbai on Monday that those sports, along with flag football and lacrosse, have been added to the programme.
Singapore Squash Rackets Association president Patrick Thio is excited about the sport’s Olympic debut, and the impact it could have on the local fraternity.
He said: “We hope that this will inspire our junior athletes to continue their pursuit of sporting excellence for the years to come.
“As part of our efforts to give our junior athletes aspirational goals, we aim to bring high-calibre competitions, such as the Singapore Squash Open, to our shores.”
Men’s world No. 1 Ali Farag of Egypt, who will play at the Nov 14-19 Singapore Open, added: “An Olympic gold medal is the dream of every athlete, and the opportunity to compete at the Olympics will motivate the entire international community for years to come.”
Cricket’s prospects have been helped by the shortened and entertaining Twenty20 (T20) format, said Singapore captain Rezza Gaznavi, 30.
With both teams restricted to a single inning and a maximum of 20 overs, the playing field is levelled – compared to the lengthy Test format – and this would increase Singapore’s chances of qualifying for a team sport in the Olympics for the first time since 1956.
Gaznavi noted: “Because cricket is such a skill based-sport, the difference is amplified in the longer format. When the game is shorter, moments of brilliance from anyone can win you a game.
“A player needs to do well for just 45 minutes and it can change the course of the entire game.”
However, despite winning the men’s 6s gold at the Phnom Penh SEA Games in May, there is a lot of work to raise Singapore’s standards and world rankings. In Cambodia, they also took bronze in the men’s T10 and T20 as Cambodia claimed gold and Malaysia silver in both events.
At the just-concluded Asian Games, Singapore lost to Malaysia by 73 runs and beat Thailand by 99 runs to be second in their group but did not advance to the men’s T20 quarter-finals.
For one thing, the Singapore Cricket Association said in July there is still no solution to their facility woes at least until 2026.
Since 2016, their players have been training at a shared facility at the Singapore Indian Association, which they said is poorly maintained and too small, after their yearly lease of the Kallang Cricket Field was not renewed that year.
Gaznavi said: “We can qualify provided we start preparations early. There also needs to be a scientific approach to the training and the matches. In T20, the roles are very clearly defined, and we need to have more specialist training.
“For example, there is the powerplay in T20 cricket where for six overs, there are only two fielders outside the 30-yard zone. The bowlers who bowl then must train to bowl in a certain way to restrict runs, while the batsmen are tasked to hit as many runs as possible within that time while the ball is new.
“To achieve all these, of course we need a dedicated facility. We will need it sooner than 2026, before we fall behind and it becomes impossible to keep up or catch up.
“Look at Malaysia, we were beating them convincingly about three years ago, and today, they are beating us quite convincingly.”
Similarly, after fielding the men’s baseball and women’s softball team for the first time at the Asian Games, and the men’s softball team qualifying for the World Cup group stage in 2024, Singapore Baseball and Softball Association president Foo Pei agreed more needs to be done to reach the Olympics.
She said: “We have acquitted ourselves decently in Hangzhou, particularly the women’s softball team.
“This gives us the beginnings of a blueprint that we can use to work towards LA 2028. We have to set our sights high and work towards that.”
