Commonwealth Games 2022: Birmingham announces its choice of sports

Three of the sports picks have been announced for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

You might remember the last time the Commonwealth Games happened, as they were held in 2018 on the Gold Coast in Australia.

Well in 2022 they're being held in the UK - in Birmingham.

This will be the third time the Commonwealth Games has been held in Britain since the turn of the century, after Manchester and Glasgow staged the event in 2002 and 2014 respectively. The Games are expected to take place between 27 July and 7 August 2022.

For the first time ever there will be more women's medal events than men's - 135 to 133.

Birmingham will also have the largest Commonwealth Para-sport programme ever.

Rather than competing as Team GB, like they do in the Olympics, all the home nations compete individually.

At the Commonwealth Games, there are compulsory, optional and recognised sports and paralympic disciplines.

According to the Birmingham 2022 website the core sports which will be in the games are athletics, aquatics (swimming and diving), basketball, badminton, boxing, cycling, gymnastics, hockey, judo, lawn bowls, netball, rugby 7s, squash, table tennis, triathlon, weightlifting and wrestling.

In 2018 Gold Coast chose eight extra events to include in their Games.

Four para-sport disciplines must also be included in each Games from para-athletics, para-swimming, para-lawn bowls and powerlifting

Three further sports chosen by the host country can also be picked from para-cycling (track), para-table tennis and wheelchair basketball.

Now Birmingham has announced some of its choices of sports to be included:

Women's T20 cricket is a new sport being voted onto the schedule for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

The competition will feature eight teams playing at Edgbaston.

The only other time cricket has been included in the Commonwealth Games was in 1998, when South Africa won a men's 50-overs-a-side competition in Kuala Lumpur.

Beach volleyball first appeared at the Summer Olympic Games in the 1992 Games as a demonstration event, and has been an official Olympic sport since 1996.

It appeared at the Commonwealth Games for the first time in 2018 where the gold medal was won by Australia who beat Canada in the final.

You might be wondering where Birmingham will find a beach to play on?

But in the past we've seen fake sandpits created especially for the occasion!

The home nations have a good track record in para-table tennis

In the men's final in the Gold Coast games England won gold and silver medals, and Josh Stacey of Wales won the bronze medal

In the women's competition England's Felicity Packard was pipped to the bronze by Australia's Andrea McDonnell.

Shooting has been dropped from the games for the first time since 1974.

It means there will be no place at Birmingham 2022 for David Calvert, Northern Ireland's most successful Commonwealth Games competitor.

But Birmingham 2022 organisers said there was no suitable location for it in the West Midlands.

The Commonwealth is a collection of countries that are linked in some way to Great Britain, all apart from Mozambique.

Almost one in every three people in the whole world live in the Commonwealth, and it is made up of people of all faiths, races, languages, cultures and traditions.

All 53 members have signed up to a set of values including democracy, gender equality and international peace and security.

The Queen is head of the Commonwealth - and this is the reason that she officially opens the Commonwealth Games at the Opening Ceremony.