The clandestine years: the history of Italian cricket told by those who did it firsthand.
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The clandestine years: the history of Italian cricket told by those who did it firsthand.

Simone Gambino did not just write a book (The clandestine years / Italian cricket from birth to recognition by CONI), that is what many do. He has written a novel, an autobiography, a family story with a volatile and savory language that nails the reader to the last page. Cricket has something to do with it - of course - it is the object of the work, but if the rest were not there, all his efforts would not be worthy of being compared to the great works of Italian sports publications.

Many have wondered why the author designates those years as "clandestine". The answer is that, before the recognition of CONI, cricket and its practitioners were not only unknown at all, but were also hindered in the activity, between improvised fields and players who had to be technicians, managers and drivers at the same time.

The period leading to the birth of the Italian Cricket Association - dated November 26, 1980 - constitutes the heroic years of a sport that very few practiced in Italy. At most those who worked in embassies and who, among the young people of the Roman or Milanese good bourgeoisie, had had the opportunity to attend England on some study holiday. In short, the intellectual and economic elites.

In Gambino's narrative it is extraordinary to see how, in order to achieve significant diffusion in Italy, cricket wanted from the beginning to include foreign workers who worked in the most disparate professions in our social fabric. Significant, and in its own way prophetic, the historic page of Corriere della Sera of 21 September 1986 by Massimo Fabbricini entitled: "Sinhalese domestic champion of Italy", summary "Here is our cricket, promised land of foreigners".

Obviously, the author also focuses on media coverage. In addition to this, however, a sort of sociological overturning must be noted. That is, in Italy cricket was no longer the pastime of the wealthy classes, but a tool of integration for immigrants from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and more.

Simone Gambino is a friend, but in the judgment of his book, friendship does not veil me. Less than ever when, with a formidable memory, he reveals dates and anecdotes of his long and successful relationship with cricket.

About luck. Was cricket luckier to meet a character like Simone or the other way around? In this regard, I have no doubt (cricket has benefited from it) whether it is true as it is true that Simone, for the love of this discipline and to launch it definitively in Italy, has given up a candidacy for the Chamber with the Republican Party and - what much more important - she drew entirely from her grandmother's inheritance - and much more from her personal wealth - to face expenses and commitments that an ever-increasing dimension was now imposing.

Gambino, therefore, is not only a promising writer of sports things (since 2003 he has mainly followed and narrated cycling, skiing and American football), but he is a well-deserving sport: founder and president of the Italian Cricket Association and then of the Italian Cricket Federation until 8 October 2016 (today he is honorary president), he first obtained recognition from the ICC (13 July 1995) and then from CONI (1 March 1997).

Without his vision open to the world, but always related to concreteness and a Franciscan spirit of service (Gambino often brought bottles of water to the cricket fields and moved chairs and tables even as president), and to his activity as a lender, today the panorama of Italian sport would be poorer. As journalism would be: Giulio, his son, Antonio's grandson, "international notebook" of Espresso, was a good player and is the director and founder of The Post Internazionale. Good blood doesn't lie.