{"id":428035,"date":"2026-02-16T03:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T03:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/428035\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T03:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T03:16:13","slug":"italys-mosca-brothers-on-t20-world-cup-andrea-bocelli-mario-balotelli-and-facing-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/428035\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy’s Mosca brothers on T20 World Cup, Andrea Bocelli, Mario Balotelli and facing England"},"content":{"rendered":"

While not all of the Azzurri’s footballing greats have cricket on their radar, Italy’s thumping 10-wicket victory over Nepal<\/a> on Thursday propelled the sport into the consciousness of a sport-loving nation, even with the ongoing Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n

The iconic Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport described it as “a result that enters the anthology of our sport”.<\/p>\n

In Mumbai, the team, who play England in Kolkata on Monday, celebrated by singing Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli – and his collaboration with Ed Sheeran for Perfect Symphony – on the team bus.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, Ed Sheeran’s a legend and then when the Italian version came on, into that second verse, it was like ‘wow, this is amazing’,” Anthony, 34, says.<\/p>\n

“I’m pretty sure Andrea Bocelli follows cricket so if he does I might have to send him a message just asking for a couple of tickets!”<\/p>\n

It is not lost on either brother how significant victories at this tournament might be for growing the profile of the sport in Italy, where there is still no grass cricket pitch.<\/p>\n

“[The win is] obviously something small that can increase Italy’s cricket community and getting onto a bigger stage,” Anthony, who works as a carpenter, says.<\/p>\n

“Like I’ve said many times before, Italy is such a passionate country with everything they do so with a bit more eyes on the game hopefully it expands a bit more for us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While not all of the Azzurri’s footballing greats have cricket on their radar, Italy’s thumping 10-wicket victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-428035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}