Italy

Federazione Cricket Italiana

Latest

1793

FIRST RECORD
OF CRICKET

1980

FCI
Established

1984

JOINED
THE ICC

43

NUMBER OF CLUBS
AS AT AUG 2020

CRICKET IN ITALY

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.

Men's

First men’s international match: vs Denmark, 15th July 1989

Major international victories:
vs ECB XI at the European Championships in 1998
vs Netherlands at the European Championships Division 1 in 2002 (Comber)
vs Netherlands at the European Championships Division 1 in 2008 (The Inch, Balorthery)
vs Denmark Final of the 2013 ICC European Twenty20 Championship Division One (County Ground, Hove)

Leading men’s international players: Kamal Kariyawasam, Samantha De Mel, Benito Giordano, Alessandro Bonora (2000 – 2017), Joe Scuderi (2001 – 2008), Michael Di Venuto (2012), Peter Petricola (2008 – 2017), Damian Crowley (2010 – 2017), Carl Sandri (2012 – 2018), Gayashan Munasinghe (2008 – Present), Luis di Giglio (2010 – Present), Gareth Berg (2012 – Present)

World Cup appearances: NIL, but made the 2012 & 2013 T20WC Qualifiers, as well as CWC Qualifiers in 1997 and 2001.

World Cricket League history: Division 3 2007 (7); Division 4 2008 (3); Division 4 2010 (2); Division 3 2011 (4); Division 3 2013 (6); Division 4 2014 (4); Division 4 2016 (6); Division 5 2017 (4)

CWC Leagues: CWC Challenge League B 2019-21

Women's

First women's international match: 16 August 1913, Bologna. Belgium (50/all out in 13.3 overs) - Italy (52/1 in 4 overs). Italy won by 9 wickets

Leading women's players: Angela Bonora

World Cup appearances: 0

Principal Grounds

Roma Capannelle Cricket Ground

Milan Cricket Ground

Aniene Cricket Ground

Pianoro Cricket Ground

Simar Arena, Latina

Brescia Cricket Ground

FCI Links

Originally compiled by

Shounak Sarkar
92 POSTS8 COMMENTS

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