How I lost my cynicism and learned to love the 'Italian' cricket team

PL is heartened by the story of the Sri Lankan born pizza-flinging wrist-spinner playing for Italy.

This half of Et Al was rooting for Nepal in the country’s World Cup match against Italy this week, mostly because it is a country close to my heart, and also because at a glance the opposition really does not seem like a, ahem, serious cricket nation.

As a young man, I’d spent more time than you probably should hanging out in the cafes on Freak Street, Kathmandu. I was there so long I became good friends with the young owner of the dingy D Square Lodge and his best mate, a weightlifter who’d won a medal at the Asian games and was known as the ‘strongest man in Nepal’. Details are hazy, but I know I returned at least three times for extended stays somewhere between 1991 and 1993.

At one point, I rented a room and a typewriter.

We used to have a time of it back in the day, tearing around the dusty streets on motorbikes and drinking chai on temple steps. I never saw a game of cricket in the country, but I kept an eye on the game, which had been introduced to the Himalayan nation as the exclusive pursuit of the ruling families before being democratised.

Over the years, you’d see stories about the peculiar passion of Nepalese cricket fans who could become so angered about a Duckworth-Lewis adjustment that they become as unruly as the Lord’s Long Room on a bad day, but the game seemed to get stronger and the administration of it better with every passing year.