Australia great Steve Waugh believes China is ‘serious’ about building a team that can win the gold medal in cricket at the LA 2028 Olympics. He said the Asian giants began their preparations as soon as it was announced that the sport would be a part of the Games for the first time in over a century. Cricket’s return was announced in 2023 after years of groundwork laid by the International Cricket Council (ICC). Cricket has existed in China since the 1800s, and it’s now reportedly played in nine cities. The country made its first competitive appearance in the 2009 ACC Trophy Challenge and participated in its first T20I in July 2023, against Malaysia, during the 2023 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Asia Qualifier. Since then, they have played 11 matches in total, winning two and losing nine. “As soon as cricket’s inclusion in the Olympics was announced, China started building a team,” Waugh was quoted as saying by ANI. “They are serious about winning gold. T20 is massive now. It’s billions of dollars, and it’s growing every day. Test cricket will survive, but T20 will dominate. Players will soon be contracted mainly to franchises. Test matches might even need special permissions,” he added. China’s surge in all-time Olympic medal tally is well-documented. They send some of the strongest contingents every year and are currently ranked seventh with 804 medals. Earlier, Waugh had also spoken in detail about the survival of the ODI format, relating the 50-over World Cup to the Olympics. “Everyone seems to think one-day cricket’s not going to survive, but then you have the World Cup and it’s huge and the ratings are massive and people love it and fall back in love with the game. Then it dies down for a couple years and we go through the same scenario,” Waugh said, as quoted by PTI. “So right now, somehow we’re managing to fit three formats of the game in and there’s pressure of T10 maybe coming in, so could be four, four formats of cricket. I don’t know how that’s all going to get managed, but right now it seems to be going okay…. World Cup is significant for one-day cricket. It’s pretty much the Olympics, to play (the World Cup) every four years,” he added.