Cricinfo has put up this article on cricket and the Olympic games as Lords is likely to be host of the Archery event in 2012.

Apart from the sole Olympic cricket game, 26 first-class cricketers have competed at the Games in other sports.

And the legend of WG Grace has so much more to it:

A teen-aged Grace had actually competed in the National Olympian Games, an early attempt at reviving the Olympics back in 1866. He made a high-speed dash by cab from The Oval to Crystal Palace to win the 440yds hurdles race and dashed back - all while playing for All England against Surrey and apparently with the approval of his captain VE Walker, later to become MCC president.

More on the soley cricket Olympic game was found as I searched the cricinfo archives in this article. I spoke onthe 12 a side games and various side matches being there in cricket in the past and the Olympic game between Great Britan and France, which Great Britan won (scorecard) was a 12 a side game spread over 2 days. The story is amusing as players didnt even know they were taking part in the Olympics!

And so ended the competition. Neither side seemed aware that they had taken part in the Olympics, and the match was only retrospectively formally recognised as being an Olympic contest in 1912, when the International Olympic Committee met to compile the definitive list of all events in the five modern Olympiads up to that point.

Meanwhile, other sports are not new in Lords as cricinfo reports:

Although Lord’s is renowned as the home of cricket, this will not be the first time that it has played host to alternative sports. The ground has rackets and real tennis courts behind the pavilion, while one of Britain’s first running tracks was put in place at the ground in 1837.

A Canadian lacrosse team played an exhibition match at the ground in 1883, while Oxford and Cambridge played their Varsity hockey match on the ground from 1969 to 1991, when the fixture moved to Reading. And even baseball has had a look-in. It hosted the first match on British shores in 1874, and teams from Canada and the USA were frequent visitors until 1914.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Cricket, Olympics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.