CRICKET

By LIAM DURKIN

 

SOOSHI Mango would have a field day with this.

Italy are on debut at the T20 cricket world cup.

Their first game was Monday (after the Express went to print).

Toongabbie allrounder Gayashan Munasinghe is a former captain of the Italian national side, while Ali Hasan, who played for Warragul only two seasons ago, is currently in India as part of the squad.

Munasinghe previously qualified to play for Italy after holding residency for four years, following his family moving there from Sri Lanka when he was 16.

He joked that the only cricket story that made the news in Italy was sandpaper-gate.

“My home club is actually inside the middle of a horse racing track and there would easily be more clubs in Gippsland than the whole of Italy,” Munasinghe said in a 2018 interview with the author.

It is estimated around only five per cent of full-blooded Italians play cricket.

So, for Italy to now be at a World Cup has them as everyone’s second-favourite team.

Amazingly, Italy could play in more cricket world cups this year than soccer.

The path to cricket qualification has admittedly been helped by a number of Aussies embracing their Italian heritage.

The Manenti brothers, Harry and Ben, bring Big Bash League experience to the side. Before them, Ex-Australian one day batsman Michael De Venuto extended his international career by playing for Italy.

In typical Italian fashion however, there has already been a dummy spit.

Joe Burns, who scored four Test tons for Australia, was set to captain Italy at the World Cup, presumably under the name Giuseppe.

Much like his Simpsons namesake though, he disagreed with how things were being done.

“Burnsy didn’t quite see eye to eye with a few people in the federation, and the way he went about telling them that was pretty direct and honest,” Ben Manenti told The Grade Cricketer podcast.

“Italians are quite stubborn (and) the stubborn Italians in Italy didn’t like that, and the stubborn Italian in Queensland (Burn’s home state) didn’t like that either, so they butted heads for a fair while back and forth.”

Sounds like a siesta is needed for everyone to cool their jets.