Outraged players of a very English sport have said ‘it’s just not cricket’ after an Italian town banned them from enjoying it in local parks.
A group of Bangladeshi heritage teenagers and adults had been playing cricket on the outskirts of Monfalcone, in north east Italy close to the city of Trieste.
The area has a thriving Bengali immigrant community of around 30,000 and many like to unwind playing the sport, which is also Bangladesh’s national game.
But in a bizarre move the mayor of Monfalcone has now ordered a ban on any bowling, batting and taking wickets, and according to the players the police have issued €100 (£84) fines to anyone caught playing.
Cricket team captain Miah Bappy told the BBC he believed the decision was because he and his fellow players were viewed as “foreign”. He said: “They say cricket is not for Italy. But I’ll tell you the truth: it’s because we are foreigners.
“If we were playing inside Monfalcone, the police would have already got here to stop us.”
Monfalcone has a long ship-building past and many of the Bangladeshis who now lived there came to help build and work on the cruise ships that have been launched from the port over the years.
However, mayor Anna Maria Cisint, who belongs to the far-right League party, has said she is on a mission to “protect” the town’s cultural heritage.
She told the BBC: “Our history is being erased, it’s like it doesn’t matter anymore. Everything is changing for the worse.”
In a remarkable outburst the mayor added she believed the Bengali community had been well treated but had given “nothing in return”, she added: “They’ve given nothing to this city, to our community. Zero. They are free to go and play cricket anywhere else outside of Monfalcone.”
The Bengali community are predonimantly Muslim, and one 19-year-old woman, who originally grew up in Bangladesh, said: “The mayor thinks that Bengalis are trying to Islamify Italy, but we are just minding our own business.”
Italy does have its own male and female national cricket teams, with the men playing their first international game against Denmark in 1989.
The teams have also competed in T20 internationals and the men beat the German national side by seven wickets in May, 2019.