When a group of young Bangladeshis started playing cricket in a park in the Italian town of Monfalcone, the reaction from local authorities was uncompromising.

They were ordered to pack up their bats and balls and leave the park that sits beneath the town’s medieval stone fortress. Then they were issued with heavy fines.

“We don’t have any opportunity to play cricket. There are 9,000 of us Bangladeshis in Monfalcone, and there is no pitch,” said Sakib Miah, 25, a keen cricketer. “If we go and play, the police arrive and we get a 100 euro fine.”

Mr Miah is one of thousands of Bangladeshis and other south Asians who live in Monfalcone, drawn to the town over the last 20 years by the promise of work in the nearby Fincantieri shipyards, which are among the largest in Europe.

Of the town’s population of 31,000, a third are migrants – one of the highest proportions of any town or city in Italy.

Not everyone in Monfalcone has welcomed the newcomers, or their fondness for cricket.

Anna Maria Cisint, the mayor of the town in the north-eastern region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, has effectively banned cricket from being played. She is a member of the hard-Right League party which is part of Giorgia Meloni’s governing coalition.

She insists that cricket is a menace to public safety, saying that errant balls have smashed the windows of houses and damaged parked cars. The ban applies to any sport that could be dangerous, she says, such as baseball.