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2026 Commonwealth Games in doubt after Victoria cancels
The 2026 Commonwealth Games are in doubt after the Australian state of Victoria cancelled its plans to host due to budget blowouts.
The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) struggled to find a host before Victoria volunteered in April 2022.
But the premier said the projected cost had now tripled and become “well and truly too much” for the state to bear.
CGF called the decision “hugely disappointing” and said it is “committed to finding a solution”.
The Commonwealth Games are a multi-sport tournament that take place every four years. They have only ever been cancelled during World War Two.
To be eligible to participate in the games, competitors must be from one of the Commonwealth’s 56 members. Most of the countries in the Commonwealth were once part of the British Empire.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on Tuesday said Victoria had been “happy to help out” when approached to host last year, but “not at any price”.
Downing Street said the cancellation was “disappointing” for fans and athletes. The prime minister’s spokesman said the UK government hoped “a viable solution” could be found by the Australian authorities and the Commonwealth Games federation. He rejected a claim the move was a sign of the decline of the Commonwealth as a whole, suggesting the King’s coronation showed “the strength of the Commonwealth and commitment of countries to it”.
Organisers had originally estimated the event – hosted across cities including Geelong, Bendigo and Ballarat – would cost A$2.6bn (£1.4bn; $1.8bn) and the state government had billed it as a boost for the regions. But now the 12-day tournament was expected to cost more than A$6 billion,
The government will still complete the stadium upgrades it had promised ahead of the games, while using the money it is now saving on housing and tourism initiatives.
CGF said the estimate of A$6bn is double the figure they were advised of at a board meeting last month, and that the increase in costs were due to the “unique regional delivery model” that Victoria chose for the games.
The government had made decisions to include more sports and changed plans for venues, often against the advice of the CGF and its Australian arm, all of which added “considerable expense”, it said.
Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto said the decision is a “massive humiliation” for the state, and “hugely damaging” for its reputation as a global events leader.
The chief executive of Commonwealth Games Australia agreed, saying the cited cost blowout was a “gross exaggeration” and that it would try to find another Australian host for the 2026 games.
Australia has held the Commonwealth Games five times – including on the Gold Coast in 2018 and in the Victorian capital of Melbourne in 2006 – but all of the country’s states on Tuesday ruled out picking up the event.
New Zealand authorities also say they will not take on the games.
Organisers have had great difficulty finding viable tournament hosts in recent years.
The South African city of Durban was originally set to stage the 2022 games, but were stripped of hosting rights in 2017 after running into money troubles and missing key deadlines. Birmingham agreed to host nine months later.
CGF had originally hoped to name a host for the 2026 games in 2019, but several hopeful bidders withdrew from the process due to cost concerns, leaving it unable to lock in Victoria as the hosts until 2022.
(BBC)
The winners of the Woorld Test Championship [WTC] final, to be played between South Africa and Australia at Lord’s starting June 11, will secure a prize money of USD 3.6 million, more than double of the winners in the last two cycles. The runners-up, meanwhile, will bag more than USD 2.1 million, while the prize for the same in the previous editions was USD 800,000.
The winners in the last two cycles — New Zealand and Australia — had earned USD 1.6 million each.
“The increase in prize money exhibits the ICC’s efforts to prioritize Test cricket as it looks to build on the momentum of the first three cycles of the nine-team competition,” the ICC said in its release.
India, who finished third on the table, will receive over USD 1.4 million, while fourth-placed New Zealand get USD 1.2 million. Even the prize money for teams finishing fifth (USD 960000) and sixth (USD 840000) — England and Sri Lanka — is more than what it was for the runners-up in the previous editions.
South Africa topped the table in the 2023-25 edition with eight wins from 12 games, and were the first team to seal a final spot with a dramatic two-wicket win over Pakistan. Defending champions Australia got through by pipping India to the second spot after winning the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 3-1 at home.
Both teams have named their squads for the final. The focus for South Africa will be on their pace spearhead Kagiso Rabada after his one-month ban for failing a drug test, while Cameron Green makes his return to Australia’s Test side after undergoing a lower spine surgery last year.
Cricket West Indies (CWI) has implored the ICC to provide a fair and transparent pathway for at least one of the Caribbean’s sovereign nations to represent West indies at the Los Angeles Olympics.
The heart of the problem here is that while in cricket many countries compete under the name the West Indies are administered by the same cricket board (CWI), the Olympics only allows sovereign nations to contest. There can be no team in which for instance, Barbadans, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Guyanese, St. Lucians play in the same team, even though that is how regular cricket is organised.
So in the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, an event in which six nations will compete in cricket, the region hopes to have at least one of its sovereign states in play. Currently, West Indies women are ranked sixth on the T20I ICC rankings, and the men are fifth. West Indies men have won the T20 World Cup twice, and the women once. It is up to the ICC to nominate the teams that will participate in the Olympics.
There is also the additional complication that the United States, as the host nation of these Olympics, may be a frontrunner to gain automatic qualification despite their low rankings, though that has not been confirmed by the ICC. This means only five further spots are available.
“The Caribbean has always punched above its weight at the Olympics, inspiring the world with our athletic brilliance,” CWI president Kishore Swallow said. “Cricket’s return to the Games in 2028 must not exclude our young cricketers from the same dream that has inspired our athletes. The Olympic Charter emphasizes fairness, transparency, and universality. We are simply asking that these principles be upheld–not just in spirit, but in structure. West Indies cricket must have a pathway, and fully deserves an opportunity to compete.”
CWI has provided the ICC with two possible ways forward. To quote from the CWI release:
- If rankings are used and West Indies men and women teams technically qualify, an internal qualifying tournament among its Olympic affiliated member countries will determine which country represents the West Indies; or
- A global qualifying pathway that includes associate ICC members in the five ICC Development Regions plus member countries of the West Indies.
The first of these options would have the CWI, through domestic tournaments, pick their champions for the LA Olympics. The second would involve a more rigorous selection process, in which the sovereign nations that are members of the West Indies board compete alongside a host of other nations for Olympics spots.
What the CWI board stresses to ICC, however, is that qualification criteria must be “fair and transparent”, citing a bylaw in the Olympic Charter. Caribbean nations are accustomed to Olympic success, as several of them are frequently atop Olympics leaderboards for medals per capita. Their collective achievements in track events in particular, are recognised almost universally as extraordinary.
CWI CEO Chris Dehring said: “Our nations have proudly flown their individual flags atop Olympic podiums as perennial gold medalists. Now, with cricket’s inclusion, we must ensure that our cricketers are not shut out of history. We are ready to collaborate. We are ready to compete. But above all, we are asking for fairness.”
The ICC has made no announcement on what the Olympics qualification process will be, so far.
Cricket has only once been played in the Olympics, way back in 1900. On that occasion, France and Great Britain competed, with Great Britan winning the two day match by 158 runs. The highest individual score for France in the second innings was 8.
[Cricinfo]
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Second lot of luxury and decommissioned vehicles owned by the Presidential Secretariat sold
The second phase of the auction to sell luxury and decommissioned vehicles owned by the Presidential Secretariat was successfully concluded today (15 May), with the auction taking place as scheduled.
A total of 26 vehicles, previously allocated to former Ministers and the former President, to their advisors and staff appointed under Article 41(1) of the Constitution during their tenure, were listed for sale. Out of these, 17 vehicles were successfully sold today.
The auctioned vehicles included:
1 BMW car
2 Ford Everest SUVs
1 Hyundai Terracan SUV
2 Land Rover SUVs
1 Mitsubishi Montero
3 Nissan Patrol vehicles
2 Nissan brand cars
1 Porsche Cayenne
5 SsangYong Rexton SUVs
1 Toyota Land Cruiser Sahara
6 V8 vehicles
1 Mitsubishi Rosa air-conditioned bus
With the aim of reducing government expenditure and promoting fiscal responsibility, a decision was taken to auction the vehicles belonging to the Presidential Secretariat.
There was a high demand for the purchase of these vehicles and over Rs. 200 million in revenue was generated through their sale at the auction held today.
There was significant interest in the auction, with 108 bidders participating.
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