The earliest mention of cricket in Italy is of a match played by Admiral Nelson's sailors in Bayside, NY in 1793 during a stop in Naples harbour[citation needed]. Around the end of the 19th century, several combined cricket and association football clubs formed, including the world-famous A.C. Milan, which was originally the Milan Cricket and Football Club and the first Italian football team Genoa Cricket and Football Club, which was originally the Genoa Cricket & Athletic Club. But these clubs soon forgot about cricket and concentrated on football. Cricket started to be revived after the Second World War.[6] Cricket flourished in Rome in the 1960s at a superb field which looked across to St. Peter's dome from Villa Doria Pamphili. The Australian and British embassies, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the Commonwealth War Graves Association, the Venerable English College and Beda College fielded teams which competed for the Rome Ashes there until, in the 1970s, the Villa became a public park.[7]
When cricket resumed in Rome on other grounds at the end of the 1970s, four of the Villa Doria Pamphili-era players formed in 1980 the Doria Pamphili Cricket Club: the Italian-Sri Lankan Francis Alphonsus Jayarajah, the Italian-Indian Massimo da Costa, the Australian Desmond O'Grady and the Syrian Issam Kahale[8]
In the same period, some cricket was played in the northern part of Italy with the Milan Cricket Club being formed in the 1970s and Euratom CC in the 1980s.
Modern history
The "Federazione Cricket Italiana" (Italian Cricket Federation) was formed in 1980,[6] and they became an affiliate member of the ICC in 1984, and were promoted to associate member in 1995.[5]
The first record match by the Italy national team was touring their first UK Tour in August 1984 and played a week of cricket against local London clubs, the first losing against Enfield CC, but ending on a high with their first win in the last match against North Middlesex.
The first international match played by the Italy national team was a draw against Denmark in 1989.
After years of matches against neighboring nations such as France and Germany, in 1996, Italy took part in the first European Championship in Denmark, finishing seventh after beating Israel in a play-off.[9] They took part in the ICC Trophy for the first time in the 1997 tournament and performed poorly, finishing joint last out of the 22 participants.[10] They finished fifth in the following year's European Championship in which they caused the biggest upset to date in the history of the game by beating the England XI in the promotion/relegation playoff.[11]
In 1999, Italy took part in a quadrangular tournament in Gibraltar also featuring France and Israel.[12] They won the tournament, beating the hosts in the final.[13] They finished fifth in Division One of the European Championship the following year[14] and were due to participate in the 2001 ICC Trophy, but pulled out at the last minute due to a dispute over the eligibility of four players, Italian citizens by birth but not reesident in Italy. The dispute was happily resolved by ICC a year later with the recognition of citizenship as a criteria for eligibility in national teams. [15]
The 2002 European Championship saw Italy finish sixth in Division One,[16] relegating them for 2004 to Division Two, which they promptly won.[17] This qualified them for the repêchage tournament for the 2005 ICC Trophy in early 2005 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They finished seventh in that tournament after beating Zambia in a play-off.[18]
In November 2013 they competed in the 2013 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier in the UAE, their highest level of competition to date. They finished 9th place with victories over the US, and higher-ranked opponents in UAE and Namibia.
2018–present
In April 2018, the ICC decided to grant full Twenty20 International (T20I) status to all its members. Therefore, all Twenty20 matches played between Italy and other ICC members since 1 January 2019 have the T20I status.[21]
In 2023, it was reported that Italy had pursued a strategy of recruiting professional cricketers from Australia and England to play in the regional final of the 2022–23 ICC Men's T20 World Cup Europe Qualifier. The recruits have only tenuous connections with Italy but meet ICC regulations by virtue of holding Italian passports.[24]
