‘I would call it a miracle’: Italy’s motley crew prepare for T20 Cricket World Cup

In a basement office in the north of Rome, Riccardo Maggio is unpacking boxes of blue jerseys with “Italia” written on them. He sighs when the landline phone rings again, and then again. Maggio is on his own, multitasking in the headquarters of the Italian Cricket Federation, tucked away in the building that houses the Italian Olympic Committee (Coni), the governing body for national sports.

The room is small and improvised, its shelves cluttered with old trophies, faded photographs of players and souvenir cricket bats. The base for Italian cricket is hardly the nucleus of a global sporting moment. Yet, in a story that has largely flown under the radar in Italy, for the first time in their history the men’s national cricket team have qualified for the T20 World Cup, co-hosted by Sri Lanka and India, which begins this weekend.

“I would call it an Italian miracle,” Maggio said. He should know. Maggio, who is operations manager for the federation and a former national player, was born in Italy to Italian-British parents. He only discovered cricket during summers spent with his grandparents in England. “I watched it on the television, and then started to play it in the park with friends,” he said. “Then I would return to Italy and play football and basketball – those were the sports that were normal here. But I loved cricket.”

The federation was founded in 1980 but Maggio didn’t realise Italy had a cricket team until during another trip to England in 1989, when he read a newspaper story about the squad touring the country for club-level games. “It was in the Guardian,” he said. “I have it at home – the headline was something along the lines of: ‘Italy takes the wicket’.”

When he returned to Italy, Maggio, who at the time was about 18, called Coni to find out how he could play cricket. “They laughed at me,” he said. “So then I went to the British embassy in Rome. They put me in touch with a local club, and that’s how I started playing in Italy.”

Maggio’s story resembles those of the players who are about to embark on Italy’s first cricket World Cup. Some are immigrants who have lived in Italy since they were children. Others are Australian, South African and British with Italian roots. There are pizza-makers and school teachers. A passion for cricket brought them together, and now their connection to Italy drives their quest to raise the profile of the sport in the country.

“This moment has been a childhood dream,” Crishan Jorge Kalugamage, the batter and bowler, said over the phone from Dubai, where the team played their warm-up matches.

The 34-year-old Kalugamage moved to Italy from Sri Lanka with his family aged 16, settling in the Tuscan city of Lucca. Cricket had formed a major part of his early childhood in Sri Lanka, but similarly to his teammates Zayn Ali, Hassan Ali and Syed Naqvi, who were all born in Pakistan but grew up in Italy, and the India-born Jaspreet Singh, Kalugamage struggled to find the game in Italy.

“For the first few years, I did athletics,” he said. “But then a team was created in Lucca and once again I had the opportunity to play cricket.”

Kalugamage, who plays for a club in Rome and travels to the Italian capital every weekend, juggles his job as a pizza-maker with training. He described a great camaraderie among the team before the tournament, with some packing Italian Moka pots to ensure they have access to good coffee throughout. However, he struggled to put into words what it will be like to compete in the event.

“We’ll be playing against the strongest teams in the world, with all the pressure and in front of all the fans – it’s the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like this,” he said.

To get to this level, Italy’s motley crew of cricketers passed through two stages of qualifiers, beating teams including Turkey, Luxembourg and Guernsey.

“The key ingredient has been our closeness,” said Peter Di Venuto, the team’s World Cup manager who played for Italy more than 20 years ago while playing club cricket in Australia. “We’ve bonded over a story and that story is one of family. There are players who live in Italy and those who have Italian heritage. They have all had their own journey to finding cricket and now we are all proud and excited to be representing Italy and giving something back.”

Sky Italia has the rights to the live broadcast of Italy’s matches and the federation has invited journalists from the Italian press and the state broadcaster, Rai, to the tournament to help drum up publicity.

Kalugamage said few people in Lucca are aware that Italy are in the tournament. This is something the federation hopes will soon change. “We hope the World Cup will encourage Italians to start playing cricket,” said Maggio. “I have a feeling that Italians are good at it – they just need to know what cricket is all about.”

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