An Olympics medal is often considered as the pinnacle of a sportsperson. Athletes sweat it out for four years to first qualify and then win a medal for their country in the Olympics. Strangely cricket was played in the 1900 Olympics with Britain winning the Gold and France the silver. What's more strange was the fact that this was the only match played. The absence of cricket from the Olympics has often been pondered and talked about by the sports world and a variety of reasons have come up which talk about why cricket is still not played at the Olympics. The popularity of cricket is limited to a few countries. With the majority of the cricket playing nations coming from Asia, there is a lack of cricket teams on the cricket field from the West. With the major powerhouse of Olympics, namely USA and China not having a cricketing team (they have but they play in the lower rungs of ICC cricket tournaments) the lack of popularity is a major factor which affects the inclusion of cricket in the Olympics.
Even though T20 is the shortest format and by far the most enjoyed format by cricket lovers whether as live cricket matches or the ICC tournaments, one T20 match takes 3-4 hours to complete. This does not fall in line with the majority of the sporting events in the Olympics which finish in a shorter span of time.
Cricket also requires the maintenance of the pitch and the outfield and a lot of maintenance for matches on the scale of Olympics to take place. This also adds a lot of pressure in terms of logistics and adds more burden on the Olympic organisers.
The cricket calendar is already very crowded with almost all the Test-playing countries having their own T20 leagues along with them playing each other on the cricket field. There is also the ICC Cricket World Cup in both the 20 and 50 over formats. Since the cricket boards have to also look after the fitness of the players and therefore not to overburden the cricketers, a lot of players might skip these tournaments in order to participate in the Olympics thus causing a dearth of talent.
There is also the lack of adrenaline and rush in cricket which makes the game boring to a lot of first time watchers. With a lack of action on the cricket field many viewers might switch over to sports which are adrenaline filled with very short periods of time. Cricket is more of a strategic game where the game proceeds more like a chess game than one which makes one witness feats of the human body.