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Explore the latest developments concerning Forza Azzurri: Manenti.

Forza Azzurri: Manenti brothers savour Italy's historic moment

Two sets of brothers hailing from Sydney were instrumental in Italy's first ever win at a cricket World Cup

There are batters, bowlers and allrounders, but Ben Manenti can break the Italian cricket team down into three other categories; fluent speakers, competent speakers and those who can pick up bits and pieces.

He falls in the latter for both as someone who can piece phrases of the Italian language together and "sort of understand it", but once his more proficient teammates get going, he admits he's "gone".

"Once Italians start talking, they start flying and that's where they lose me," Manenti told cricket.com.au from Kolkata ahead of their third T20 World Cup match against England on Monday.

Cricket: Ben Manenti – This is the biggest stage most of us will play on

While the Australian team hasn't had the happiest start to the T20 Cricket World Cup but there are other Aussies in the tournament who have enjoyed success already. Italy beat Nepal by 10 wickets with Sydney brothers sharing an unbeaten 124 run partnership opening the batting.

Another pair of Australian brothers – Harry and Ben Manenti – also played a key role with Harry skippering and Ben taking  2 for 9 off 4 overs.

He chatted to Sam Lane and Lehmo and told them this is the pinacle for most of their team.

Ben  and Harry Manenti both represent the Italian national cricket team.(ABC News: Ben Pettitt/Supplied)

T20 World Cup: Rugby coach father sees sons make their mark in cricket — the Manentis' story

KOLKATA: We probably still think we're better at rugby than we are at cricket,” laughs Benjamin Manenti, sitting next to his brother Harry. The backdrop to this question was that their father, John Manenti, is an Australian rugby union coach and head coach of the San Diego Legion in Major League Rugby. With his Italian passport, the Australian has coached rugby in Italy and even played there.On Monday, the brothers, Benjamin and Harry, took the field for Italy as the European nation made its T20 World Cup debut against Scotland at Eden Gardens here. Growing up in Sydney, the Manentis played rugby during winter and cricket during summer. As much as they loved rugby, cricket during the summer became their path. “It wasn't by choice. It was just sort of the way it panned out. Which, now, we are very grateful. We definitely didn't just have our eyes on cricket. We would have played whatever we could,” Benjamin explains.

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