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Is there anything in common between the skill of making excellent pizzas and spinning a cricket ball? Perhaps only Crishan Kalugamage can answer that unusual question because he has mastered both skills. He is a pizza chef by trade and a cricketer by passion. The Sri Lanka-born spinner is among the only five Italy residents who are representing the European country in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup that is now in progress.

The rest of the Italian team consists of a hodgepodge mix of cricketers from different corners of the planet. Some do not live in Italy and many of them cannot speak the language. Some have never even visited Italy. But, due to a relaxation of rules by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for this tournament, they have been able to meet the qualifying stipulations to play for Italy.

As everyone knows, Italy is a land where football is a religion. The position that cricket holds in India, football holds in Italy. It has won the FIFA World Cup four times. The names of legendary footballers like Paolo Maldini, Gianluigi Buffon, Franco Baresi and Paulo Rossi are embedded in all Italian minds. But few in the public have an understanding of cricket.

Crishan wants to change the script

But one person who hopes to change the script is leg spinner Crishan Kalugamage who moved from Sri Lanka to Lucca in the Tuscany region of Italy when he was a 15-year-old boy. He is now a pizza maker but his cricket playing skills have made him one of five Italy-based players in the country’s 15-man squad for the T20 World Cup.

The 34-year-old Sri Lankan is one of many players in the Italian squad who have made great sacrifices to make headway in their lives. Kalugamage’s job as a pizza chef often clashed with his cricket playing career. Several times, he was sacked from his job because he would go missing every Sunday and on every holiday too, because he was busy playing cricket instead of making pizzas.

But Italy’s coach John Davison has a high opinion of Crish. “He is a very dangerous weapon in our team,” said the chief coach. “He can spin the ball sharply both ways and he will have an element of surprise in his favour. Because hardly anyone in the tournament will have ever faced him.”

Unusual case of Jon Jon Smuts

Another player, Jon Jon Smuts, who qualified to play for Italy through marriage, has never been to Italy. As the name indicates, Smuts is of South African origin. One may recall that there was a South African prime minister by the name of Field Marshal Jan Smuts who was an adversary of Mahatma Gandhi but later became an admirer. The cricket player has the same surname as the former PM but is not related.

Jon Jon Smuts has never seen the glorious sights of Rome, Venice or Florence, but the ICC rules for associate nations are so loose that he can represent Italy merely because he married an Italian woman named Judi Castignani. In Test cricket, no player would have been allowed to represent a country merely because he got married to a citizen of that country. But for the T20 World Cup, ICC has decided to relax the rules.

Jon Jon was born in South Africa and has lived there all of his life. He even played for South Africa in six ODIs and 16 T20Is – 22 times in all. For the last 19 years, Smuts has played cricket in South Africa, mostly for his home union Eastern Cape, and more recently for the Durban-based team, the Dolphins. He had no plan to change nationalities until his wife, Judi, arranged for the entire family to obtain Italian passports.

Italy’s captain is South African

Italy’s captain Wayne Madsen is also from South Africa. He was born in Durban but he became eligible to represent Italy in the T20 World Cup because his grandmother was Italian. 

Recently, he told the BBC: “People can have their opinion, but we’ve got a real togetherness. There is a bond that is pretty hard to describe outside of the feeling that we get as a group.” The 42-year-old South African-born batter is club captain at Derbyshire in England and has a wealth of experience with teams around the globe.

Smuts believes that Italian cricket has the potential to challenge more established nations in the future. In an interview with ESPN, he said: “In the past, no one followed rugby in Italy, but now the growth of rugby is amazing. Our dream for Italy is to make that happen in cricket. Obviously, this World Cup will have a big impact because Italy is competing on the world stage. Matches will be telecast in Italy. I am sure that this tournament is going to be awesome for all Italians.”