Asian immigrants fire up Italian interest in cricket

By Mark Meadows

MILAN (Reuters) - Cricket is finally getting noticed in Italy, more than 100 years after it helped introduce soccer to the country.

A group of British expatriates set up Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club in the Italian port in 1893 and it was only when English doctor James Richardson Spensley joined a few years later that soccer was added to the programme.

Spensley became known as one of the fathers of Italian football and the sport swept the nation, leaving cricket with little recognition except for its continued presence in the full name of top-flight soccer side Genoa Cricket and Football Club.

Now a new breed of expatriates in Italy -- from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh -- are putting cricket back into the limelight.

The lucrative new Indian Premier League found its way on to Italian satellite television in June and famed newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport has carried stories about the game.

"There are loads of people playing cricket in the streets," the Italian cricket federation's president Simone Gambino told Reuters.

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