BRISBANE: When Joe Burns joined the Italian team for his first training session, he didn’t know what to expect. The Australian-born cricketer with Italian heritage had decided to represent the European nation earlier this year.  It was his first time with the team, and the facility was unlike anything he had experienced before.

“It was our first training session. So, we turned up and it was in the middle of a tomato farm,” Burns recalls in a conversation with this daily. “Associate cricket in general, but in particular in Europe, the grounds are privately owned. So, you get a lot of different variations to where you play,” he added.

This was in the middle of 2024. In the time since, Italy have qualified for the ICC 2026 men’s T20 World Cup European Region final — Burns smashed a century in the Europe Sub-regional Qualifiers final against Romania to make sure of it — and will be competing with teams like Netherlands and Scotland next year to book a ticket for the global event.

Now, that is not the full story. Burns, while being the biggest name from Australian cricket to have made the move, it is just the beginning. Post the World War II, hundreds of thousands of Italians migrated to Australia. Those families, including the grandparents of Burns, took a leap of faith in pursuit of a better life. While the trend continued till the early 1970s before gradually decreasing, people with Italian heritage are a significant part of the Australian population. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are over 150K Italian heritage people (163, 326 as per 2021 Census) living in the country.