Cricket, you might think, is among the more benign legacies of British imperialism—a sport that unites blazer-wearing English toffs and players who first applied bat to ball in the slums of Kingston or Kolkata. But in Monfalcone, a town in north-eastern Italy, cricket has become a political football. (Sorry.)
Almost a third of Monfalcone’s more than 28,000 inhabitants are of Bangladeshi origin. Most of the men were drawn to the town by the opportunities for work in Monfalcone’s giant shipyard. And, with rare exceptions, they are passionate about cricket.
But, says Sani Bhuiyan, a town councilor for the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), they cannot play it. “In practice, cricket is banned. A climate has been created in which, if you play, you get fined.” Anna Maria Cisint of the hard-right League, who was mayor when the police started handing out fines, denies it is because cricket is un-Italian or because so many of its fans are immigrants. “It is simply that in certain public spaces, as happens everywhere, acts that are potentially capable of damaging property and injuring people are prohibited,” she says. Cricket balls are indisputably hard and can be propelled at high speed by capable batsmen. But a nearby local authority controlled by the PD had no difficulty finding a venue this summer for a tournament.
Ms Cisint has taken aim at the immigrants before. As mayor, she removed a number of public benches that were often used by the Bangladeshis, and she also ordered them not to pray in the town’s Islamic centres. The Bangladeshis, who do not have a mosque, managed to get that ban overturned in the courts. Ms Cisint’s policies have nevertheless brought her and the League success: in elections this year, she won a seat in the European parliament, and her party retains control of Monfalcone’s town council, in which she still has a seat. Her fellow townspeople, she says, are fed up with “the presumptuousness of the Islamic community”.
To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europeour weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Ltd. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. The original content can be found on www.economist.com
