Italy captain Wayne Madsen (Photo: Joe Allison-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
Italy Cricket Team: T20 World Cup 2026 is special in itself. The reason for it being special is that 20 teams are taking part in it. For the first time in the history of T20 World Cup, so many teams are playing in one edition. Among these 20 teams, there is a captain of one team who has tried his hand in hockey before cricket. Before becoming the captain of a cricket team of one country, he has played Hockey World Cup for another country. We are talking about Van Madsen, who played the Hockey World Cup for South Africa 20 years ago, who is in command of the Italy cricket team in the current T20 World Cup.
42 year old Italy captain Madsen
Italy’s hopes are pinned on 42-year-old Wayne Madsen in the T20 World Cup. He is an experienced batsman and has experience of playing in many small and big T20 leagues of the world. Italy cricket team will obviously benefit from those experiences of Wayne Madsen.
Italy won the warm-up match from Canada
In the T20 World Cup 2026, the Italian team will start its campaign against Scotland on 9 February. He has shown the trailer of his preparations for the tournament in the match against Canada on February 2. In its first warm-up match played in Chennai, Italy defeated Canada by 10 runs.
Batting first, Italy scored 156 runs for 4 wickets in 20 overs. JJ Smut scored the maximum 49 runs for him. Captain Wayne Madsen’s performance was nothing special. He scored only 10 runs in 11 balls with 1 four. The Canadian team got the target of scoring 157 runs in 20 overs. But his car stopped at 146 runs. In this way, Italy managed to win its first warm-up match under the captaincy of Wayne Madsen.
Wayne Madsen’s career in international cricket
42-year-old Wayne Madsen, who played the Hockey World Cup for South Africa 20 years ago and is now captaining the Italy cricket team, has the experience of 7 international matches. In those 7 matches, he has scored 205 runs with 2 half-centuries. His international career started in July 2023.
Madsen has a total experience of 219 T20 matches, in which in 211 innings he has scored 5516 runs with 2 centuries and 25 half-centuries and has also taken 22 wickets. In this, he played 177 matches in T20 Blast, 22 in The Hundred, 4 in SA20, 2 in PSL while the remaining 7 played T20 International matches.