There used to be a time when International Olympic Committee high-ups visiting Asia turned their authoritative noses up at the media’s half-amusing queries about cricket’s likely inclusion in multi-discipline events in the future, allowing themselves frivolous, even supercilious answers which might not have gone down well in Mumbai and Lahore if the relevant countries’ boards got to know of them. At the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok, an IOC functionary in an immaculately tailored suit, acutely uncomfortable in the oppressive heat and humidity of the Thai capital city, told The Statesman of the little chance cricket stood, given its appeal being limited to a small part of the continent.

But, as the IOC explained in Mumbai the other day why the bat-and-ball game had made it for the Los Angeles Olympics fixed for 2028, claiming it was now the world’s second largest game with 2.5 billion followers, it was easy to understand how figures could be computed to come up with alternative facts.

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The Asia Cup is about India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, after all. What the IOC hadn’t primed Niccolo Campriani, Italy’s Olympic sharpshooter and sport director at LA 2028, to say ~ that India now had too lucrative a market for the Olympics’ polished pedlars to bypass ~ would have been generally known. And speechwriters could be seen to have done their work well when Campriani compared Virat Kohli with the trio of Le Bron James, Tom Brady and Tiger Woods to let it be known that the former all-format Indian captain’s 340 million followers on social media easily put him ahead of their combined tally. There is magic in numbers considering India’s ever-growing population. which, as early as when Vinoba Bhave was spearheading the Bhoodan movement was interpreted by a Western reporter to be suggestive of India’s most potent weapon.

Kohli may not have made half the impact Woods did at his best but the Indian’s presence on the scene, given a captive audience’s 24×7 adulation could someday eclipse bigger superstars than the troika specified. It shows India will yield what the IOC wants, which is money. Whether cricket is happy to have been clubbed in a quintet for the Los Angeles lark ~ with flag football, softball/baseball, lacrosse and squash ~ is of no consequence here; what is important is that, unlike breakdancing, pencilled in for Paris 2024 but unlikely to survive it, cricket will perhaps not be got rid of once the show in Los Angeles ends. It will begin paying off in the next Games where India’s men’s team can be counted on to be looked at as one of the best, with International Cricket Council rankings determining who get in. The women will fancy their chances too. The IOC – ICC synergy will be mutually beneficial, though Twenty20s getting to be known as cricket’s public face may leave real buffs somewhat underwhelmed. They will lump what they don’t like.