Growing up in Perth, Australia, it was sometimes hard to understand how cricket could ever have originated in that grey, damp country on the other side of the world, where Test matches always seemed to be interrupted by prolonged periods of rain. Cricket's a game that demands sunshine, hard, fast wickets, lots of cold beer, and more sunshine.

Nothing could be more natural, then, than that cricket should now be developing rapidly in the Mediterranean region, where the summers might have been designed for the sport. It's had a foothold in Greece (especially in Corfu) for many years, of course, and Italy has recently begun to make an impact on the European stage, returning to the ECC First Division championship this year.

Both these countries have the advantage of a large diaspora, communities of expatriate families in cricket-playing societies like Australia and South Africa, and in recent years they've made skilful use of that resource to help develop cricket at home. And nowhere has the role of émigré players been more significant than in Croatia, where the game has made remarkable progress in less than a decade.

Cricket was introduced to Croatia in 1998, or rather re-introduced, since the first games were played as early as 1815, during the British occupation of the Dalmatian island of Vis. With the establishment of Croatian independence in 1991 many expats came back to the ‘old country', and it was among these returning Australians that the idea of setting up a Zagreb cricket club first took root.

In any such enterprise, one of the first problems is finding opposition, but the Croatians were fortunate in having a similar, and slightly older-established club in Ljubljana, in nearby Slovenia, and a full-scale league in Austria. It was here, and, once they got access to a ground and the word began to get around, against pioneering touring sides, that Zagreb CC played their early matches.

No sooner was the sport established than the Croatians made their debut on the European stage, participating in an EEC representative tournament in Austria in 2000 and, with the help of the brothers John and Paul Vujnovic from New Zealand, finishing a creditable second.

Croatia became an Affiliate member of the ICC the following year, and since then they've played in an ECC tournament every year, winning the 2004 Representative Championship undefeated and finishing seventh in last year's Affiliates' tournament in Belgium. This secured them a place in Division 3 of the restructured ECC system.

They rely heavily on players from that diaspora: apart from the Vujnovici, who have played in all these tournaments, the squad in the 2005 tournament included the Western Australians Phil Ciljeg, Jeff Grzinic and Chris Pivac (right, who hit two centuries), South Australian Pero Kastelan, South African Craig Sinovic, and English resident Tony Govorko.

It is, of course, a controversial topic, and one which affects the High Performance countries as well as newcomers like Croatia, and is debated in other sports as well, such as rugby union. What is the right balance between home-grown talent and players from abroad? Even England, after all, has not been above playing a succession of cricketers, from Tony Greig to Kevin Pietersen, drawn from its own world-wide diaspora.

In the words of the old legal adage, circumstances alter cases, and it's probably right that every country determine its own policy within the very clear qualification rules laid down by the ICC. Having a successful national team is an important element in raising interest (and investment!) in any sport, and if the expatriate Croatians are able to help cricket register on the local radar, then that's an important contribution to the development of the game.

And it's not as if the fledgling Croatian Cricket Board is ignoring the domestic scene. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the past five years has been the reintroduction of cricket to the island of Vis, where there are now two clubs and an extremely active youth programme. There and in Zagreb, more than 300 children are participating in the game, while several schools have incorporated it into the curriculum, and it is from these roots that the future development of Croatian cricket will come.

The overseas players have their part to play here as well. Sinovic (right) has settled in Zagreb, and the New Zealand- and Western Australian-based players are raising money back home to support the development of cricket in Croatia. As in European countries where the game is longer established, this could involve young cricketers spending a northern winter Down Under, and a long-term objective is a Southern Hemisphere tour by a Croatian side.

Croatia now has a handful of Level 1 coaches and one at Level 2, but a much firmer infrastructure will be needed if the most promising of those 300 kids are to develop to the point where they can hold their own in European age-group tournaments, the breeding-ground of home-grown talent. The more time players from the diaspora are able to spend in Croatia the better it will be, and it's a positive sign that several are planning visits this summer despite the fact that the national side has no tournament commitments this year.

A huge amount has been achieved in just eight years, and with four clubs, two grounds, and (despite the logistical problems with two clubs in Zagreb and the other two in Vis) an incipient national league, the Croatians have established a base from which they could become a real European cricketing power. After all, they have the weather for it.