Italy will play their first official men’s One Day Internationals in December 2026. The CWC Qualifier Playoff, an eight-team tournament carrying full ODI status, confirmed Italy’s entry after they finished second in Challenge League B in Tanzania.
This is a team that did not exist on the ODI map until now. In 18 months, Italy went from zero World Cup history to T20 World Cup participants to ODI debutants.
Italy sealed qualification by beating Hong Kong by six wickets on August 17. Marcus Campopiano scored an unbeaten 74 off 144 balls. Ben Manenti added a quickfire 50 from 32 deliveries to finish the chase in 46 overs.
The result capped a dominant Challenge League B campaign: seven wins from ten matches, a net run rate of 2.914, and only one defeat across the entire cycle. Uganda topped the group with eight wins, but Italy’s run rate was the highest of any team in either Challenge League group.
The Road From Here
The Qualifier Playoff in December features eight teams. The top two from Challenge League A (Jersey and Kuwait), the top two from Challenge League B (Uganda and Italy), and the bottom four from CWC League 2. Every match carries ODI status.
The top four finishers advance to the main CWC Qualifier in February 2027, a ten-team event. The winner of that tournament qualifies directly for the 14-team 2027 Cricket World Cup in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Second through fourth enter the Super Series for additional qualification spots.
Italy are four strong performances away from a realistic shot at a Cricket World Cup.
The squad that will take this on is unlike any other in international cricket. Twelve of the fifteen players work jobs outside cricket. Seven of the starting eleven are based in Australia. There are no homegrown Italian cricketers in the roster.
“There are no Italian homegrown players in our team, because there is no culture of the game in my country.”
Simone Gambino, Founder and Honorary President of FCRI, Emerging Cricket
The domestic contingent comes largely from South Asian migrant communities in Rome, Milan, and Brescia. Players train on astroturf pitches with limited facilities. The gap between their playing conditions and those of the teams they compete against is vast.
“Crish is a good example, he just got a Man of the Match in a World Cup-winning game and he makes pizzas for a living.”
Harry Manenti, ESPNcricinfo, T20 World Cup 2026
Crishan Kalugamage, Jaspreet Singh, and Rakibul Hasan bowl alongside former county professional Gareth Berg and Big Bash regular Ben Manenti. Marcus Campopiano, who averaged 54.83 across the Challenge League cycle, anchors the batting. Former Australian Test opener Joe Burns captains the side, having qualified through Italian heritage after a three-year cooling-off period.
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Fifty overs will test this squad in ways T20 cricket never has. In a T20, you can hide a weak link for four overs with the ball and send them in at number nine with the bat. In an ODI, every player fields for 50 overs minimum, bowlers need to sustain accuracy across ten-over spells, and the batting order must handle rebuilds after collapses. A squad of part-timers with limited preparation together faces a physical endurance problem that talent alone cannot solve.
The teams Italy will face in the Qualifier Playoff, sides like Jersey, Kuwait, and the League 2 dropouts, have professional or semi-professional structures. They train together regularly. Italy’s preparation is compressed into tournament windows. That gap matters less in a T20 sprint. Over 100 overs, it compounds.
The context around this achievement makes it sharper. Italy qualified for the T20 World Cup in 2025, beat Nepal by ten wickets at the tournament in February 2026, and pushed England close before losing. Meanwhile, Italy’s football team missed its third consecutive FIFA World Cup after losing a playoff final to Bosnia and Herzegovina on penalties. Iceland Cricket captured the mood: “Congratulations to Italy! Since they gave up on football, their cricket has gone from strength to strength.”
Cricket in Italy was never supposed to reach this point. AC Milan, Inter Milan, and Genoa all started as cricket clubs in the late 1800s, founded by British textile workers. The sport disappeared from Italian life within decades. Italy gained ICC Affiliate membership in 1984 and spent forty years in the lower tiers.
What happens in December will not change that history overnight. But Italy will walk onto a cricket field with ODI caps on the line, playing matches that count toward the World Cup, with a squad assembled from three continents and held together by compressed tournament windows. The first ball they face in 50-over international cricket will be in a knockout environment. There are no warm-up ODIs. No bilateral learning curve. They compete or they go home.
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