Cricket in Italy was first played in 1793, when Admiral Horatio Nelson organised the first ever cricket game in Naples. A century later, two of the world’s most famous football clubs, AC Milan and Genoa Cricket & Football Club began their lives as cricket clubs in 1889 and 1893 respectively. However, due to reasons such as restricted access and elitist attitudes as well as lack of proper grounds, cricket never took off amongst the local population. Consequently, football rose in popularity to become Italy’s favourite sport.

From the 1930s to 1970s, cricket was played very sporadically. However, through the efforts of a few enthusiastic locals, Asian and British expats as well as some embassy employees, the Associazione Italiana Cricket was founded in 1980. This then became ‘Federazione Cricket Italiana’ in 1997 with ICC and Italian Olympic Committee membership. Since the 2000s, increased immigration from South Asia have boosted player numbers. Currently, cricket is one of the fastest growing sports in Italy, measured in terms of percentage increase in participation.

While cricket’s most famous and successful Italian, former New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori has never played for Italy; the national team has relied on Italian heritage players & Italian passport holders from England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland as well as Asian expats to make up the squad. In recent times, the board has prioritised investment into development programs for local players and building of proper facilities to run high performance programmes. The board hopes that these measures will improve player skills and improve the national’s team performance in ICC events, in the future.