Greece’s decision to tap into their sizeable Australian diaspora – in excess of 400,000 people in the country have Greek ancestry – will inevitably draw some comparisons with Italy.<\/p>\n
The Azzurri participated in their maiden T20 World Cup earlier this year having come through sub-regional qualifying. <\/p>\n
None of Italy’s squad at that tournament were born in the country, and they picked five Aussie-Italians including two sets of brothers – the Manentis and Moscas.<\/p>\n
Senior figures involved with the Greek federation, though, have told BBC Sport they will exercise a degree of caution over the ongoing integration of Australian players with Greek heritage such as Konstas.<\/p>\n
Greece’s cricket scene is largely centred around the island of Corfu, where the sport has been played for more than two centuries and developing homegrown talent with a pathway to the national team is seen as a major priority.<\/p>\n
Around two-thirds of their squad, overseen by coach Tim Dellor, for the European qualifier in Finland, were born in Greece.<\/p>\n
Their party also includes a couple of UK-based players in Dimitrios Triandafillithis and Christodoulos Bogdanos, who both play club cricket in Yorkshire.<\/p>\n
Greece’s attempts to get past the first qualification hurdle for the T20 World Cup will not be straightforward, having been drawn in a group with favourites Germany.<\/p>\n
Also in their pool are Portugal, who are set to be bolstered by the presence of veteran former Australia all-rounder Moises Henriques, who was born in Madeira. <\/p>\n
BBC Sport understands Portugal may also be able to call upon opening batter Ricardo Vasconcelos, depending on his commitments with Northamptonshire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greece’s decision to tap into their sizeable Australian diaspora – in excess of 400,000 people in the country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-830722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}