Blocks of Blockchain, Dust of the Maidan: The Unseen Connection in Asian Cricket

My Mumbai notebook has an entry from 2026: "Saif, left-arm spinner, 14 years old, Dharavi. Father drives a van. Dream: India jersey. Income: zero." The name came from a coach at Dharavi Youth Club. I saw the boy play only twice. The first time was on a maidan after the monsoon, the ball turning abnormally—leg-spin isn't learned at that age, it takes born talent. The second time was a winter tournament, where his team lost in the final over. After the match, the coach told me, "Nobody took him because his father can't network with anyone."

The day I first heard the term "fan token" at a press conference, I felt this boy would have no connection to the new economy. Before the world knew their names, I had them penciled in a Mumbai notebook. The maidan keeps its own archives, written in dust and monsoon.

Blockchain is now part of cricket's corporate story. In 2026, Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Capitals launched their fan tokens on the Socios platform. The companies claim token holders can vote on minor club decisions. The ICC is working on blockchain-based ticketing to stop counterfeit tickets and scalping. Bangladesh Premier League and Lanka Premier League have tested digital ticketing in a few matches. Ticket reform was discussed during Sourav Ganguly's tenure as BCCI president, but those plans never reached blockchain. In 45 years of my career, I have watched many technologies arrive. Hawk-Eye, DRS—each began as a "game-changer" and later became part of the game itself. But my hesitation about blockchain sits elsewhere.

Those genuinely benefiting from this technology were already rich. What does a supporter get by buying a fan token? A digital image of the club jersey, a poll or two, and some badges. This is not ownership; it is engagement—which has added a new dimension to big franchises' marketing budgets. But does the money from those tokens reach a child's training on the maidan? I have not seen that accounting anywhere.

The second layer is smart contracts. The idea is seductive: play a match, and performance-based payment triggers automatically, with no agent or manager in the middle. It can work in franchise leagues where contracts are well-organized. But how many of the 137 players in my notebook have formal contracts? Match fees are counted by hand in cash, with no record. How will a smart contract enter a record-less economy? Blockchain's biggest promise is transparency, but where no structure exists, transparency means nothing.

The third layer is ticketing. This is perhaps the most practical use. Crypto-based tickets can stop counterfeits and control resale. Trials have succeeded in England and Australia. Outside Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium, I have myself seen counterfeit ticket sellers—on big match days, gangs of scalpers occupy the gates. So this technology could work in Asia's big venues too. But the question remains: how will spectators at a mofussil club match buy digital tickets? Network, smartphone, digital wallet—these three things are still luxuries for a large part of Asia's cricket economy.

The fourth layer could have been player payments in digital currency. India's digital rupee or Bangladesh's mobile financial services already transact in crores. But cricket clubs' accounts remain offline. In rural tournaments, trophies, money orders and cash are the three means by which match fees arrive. If those transactions were recorded on a digital ledger, parents would not have to depend on a coach's word.

I have not kept count of how many names have accumulated in my cricket notebook since 2026. From Mirpur in Dhaka to Mumbai's Shivaji Park and Azad Maidan—every place has collected names, bowling actions, and details of match fees. A club coach in the Dhaka Premier League once told me, "My boy has been playing for three years and hasn't received a single taka in salary. But if you ask him, he'll say the opportunity itself is huge." Some of these boys have appeared in domestic T20s; others have vanished. If those records were on a ledger—every trial, every match fee, every promised date—many families would today hold proof. A ledger could have created a document of the maidan's deprivations. But so far, no crypto company has come asking for the names in my notebook. Why would they? These names won't sell any tokens.

Here lies the real paradox. The blockchain industry's habit is: solution first, problem later. The same pattern appeared when it entered cricket. I have seen the marketing of digital match-moment collectibles on NFT marketplaces. In 2026, several Indian cricketers' names were caught up in advertisements for a crypto exchange that later went bankrupt. Fans were deceived. When trust in technology leads to wrong investments, the ordinary supporter bears the loss. There is another layer—anti-corruption. Cricket's dark chapters are written in the history of match-fixing. The ICC's anti-corruption unit still tracks suspicious dealings manually. If every match's data, field placements and betting patterns were on a ledger, that chapter might have closed long ago. But that is not a story of commercial profit, so nobody looks that way.

There is also the environmental question. Blockchain's energy demand remains a big problem. The carbon footprint of one transaction is many times that of a regular database. For South Asia, which lives through frequent floods, disasters and heatwaves, this is no small matter. If cricket truly wants sustainability, it should choose technology with a lower environmental cost.

Technology solves problems, but sometimes creates new ones too. A smart contract's terms are fixed by the written code. If the code is wrong, the wrong payment goes out, and preventing that requires even more technology. For a player's family working two shifts a day, such complexity is another burden. The complexity of technology outweighs its simplicity—until someone actually thinks about the real user.

I am not saying blockchain is useless. I am saying its order of use is reversed. Blockchain's first beneficial use in Asian cricket should be at the grassroots level, not in franchise fan tokens. Imagine: the result of every trial, every club match fee, every coach's promise—written on an immutable ledger. If any cricket board built that, families of thousands of children like Dharavi's Saif could hold proof of what their sons are owed. That would be true empowerment, not token ownership.

In 2026, during the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Mumbai, I built a database of 137 players. From that experience I learned: those whose names are on record get noticed. Those whose names are not, vanish silently. The same is true in cricket. If my notebook pages could prove when, where and for what payment a player competed—that notebook would become his first bank statement. Blockchain could be the digital form of that notebook.

When a major event like the T20 World Cup arrives in 2026, the online ticket market peaks. Counterfeit incidents also rise then. During the 2026 ODI World Cup, a young man was caught outside Ahmedabad with an entire stack of fake tickets. Blockchain ticketing could have prevented that. But before that technology reaches rural spectators, it must first reach a smartphone. Grassroots writers like me are the first historians of this game. We write match reports and profiles, but our writings are not preserved anywhere. If an online archive lived on a ledger, researchers fifteen years from now could know which left-arm spinner first shone on which Mumbai maidan in 2026. Newspaper pages turn yellow; a decentralized notebook would last forever.

In 2026, Bangladesh's domestic cricket announced that Dhaka Premier League players would be paid through banks. That announcement effectively collapsed, because the clubs simply do not have transparent accounts. What was needed first was not code or contracts but a simple accounting book. Blockchain could have been the upgraded version of that book, but that does not create commercial excitement.

A notebook is a stadium for players who never got one. My notebook has been soaked in rain and torn on bus seats, but I have not erased a single line. If technology comes to protect those lines, welcome. But if technology only expands the business of big franchises, it is merely another expensive notebook. Mine is free. I do not know where Saif is now. But in the year the fan token market boomed, what his family received as match fees I never saw with my own eyes—because there was no record at all. Sometimes I think, even without a ledger, the maidan's dust remains witness to every transaction.