Blockchain and Cricket: Who Really Owns the Field in the Age of Tokens?

Last October I stood outside the gates of Mirpur's Sher-e-Bangla Stadium at five in the morning. No crowd, only a few security guards and steam rising from a tea kettle. In my hand was my old notebook; on my phone screen glowed a QR code. My match ticket is no longer paper — it is an immutable entry written into a blockchain. That morning I understood for the first time that the most ordinary thing in cricket — a ticket, which a spectator tears to make a memory — is quietly changing. I have been writing about cricket for fifteen years. The tremor in a batter's hand, the silence of an empty gallery, the sound of rain on seats — I have recorded them all in notebooks. What I must record now is no longer only a story of the field; it is a story of data, of code, and of power. The technology called blockchain has entered cricket, and it has raised a question far bigger than ticketing: who actually owns this game? Blockchain is essentially a distributed ledger. Every transaction is written into a block that is hard to forge, and those blocks link one after another into a chain. It began with cryptocurrency, but the technology has now entered cricket along three routes — digital collectibles, fan tokens, and smart contracts. Around 2026 the India-centred platform Rario entered the market making digital cards of cricketers; then FanCraze joined hands with the International Cricket Council to release digital collectibles around the 2026 ODI World Cup. Just as Socios sells club fan tokens in football, cricket has attempted the very same model. Behind each of these three routes sits a promise. The first promises — you too can hold a piece of the game. The second — you are not merely a spectator, you are part of the decision. The third — all transactions are transparent, no one will cheat you. I want to look at these three promises separately, because behind each hides a different reality. The brighter the promise, the greyer the reality — that is the first lesson of the digital cricket economy. When I stand outside Lord's and watch a young English fan buy a club fan token, I remember a fan in Dhaka who, at the end of the month, must choose between his father's medicine and a token. The great advertisement of a fan token is ownership. In reality it is not ownership but a voting right, which a club or board can restrict at any moment. Even if India's board releases tokens bearing the names of Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma, it is the boards that hold the IP in cricket; so when tokens sell, the profit goes to the board and the platform — the fan is left with an app and a promise. The ticketing side sounds even flashier. A ticket built with a smart contract cannot be forged, resale at inflated prices in the black market is caught in the code itself, and verification at the stadium gate takes a blink. I remember a group of Bangladeshi fans who, unable to enter a World Cup match with hand-written tickets, sat outside and wept — a tout had taken much of their money. In that sense blockchain tickets really can break the tout's kingdom. But when the technology itself sets the ticket price — rising automatically as demand rises — entering the ground becomes even harder for the ordinary fan. The players' side is worth watching too. Smart contracts can pay salaries, bonuses and match fees automatically, so no one in the middle can eat the money. For women cricketers and cricketers on the domestic circuit, this could be a tool of liberation. Many cricketers in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or the Caribbean spend years fighting over money stuck with their boards. Only if blockchain forces transparency on the boards is its real value realised — otherwise it is just another glittering layer. A star like Shakib Al Hasan has for years been entangled in financial disputes with his board; the story of contracts existing on paper yet money not arriving on time is everywhere in cricket. Here a smart contract could stage a quiet revolution. When conditions are met, the money moves itself into the player's account; no one can hold it back pending approval at a board meeting. But who writes the condition? The board does. Technology can be neutral, but the language of a contract never is. The battle over broadcast and digital rights runs deeper. The lion's share of world cricket's broadcast revenue today lies with the Indian market. Blockchain-based platforms are adding a new stream to that revenue — fans paying directly for a digital card whose real value is set by the board and the platform, not the market. In one sense this is another app-based tax, slowly drawing money from the pockets of teenage fans in South Asia. On corruption, many treat blockchain as a miraculous solution. Match-fixing, spot-fixing, betting — since these run on an invisible network, the suspicion is that if this network could be verified on a blockchain, catching offenders would be easier. That is half true. Blockchain can see transactions, but it cannot see mindsets, pressure, or the role of middlemen. Corruption is a social disease; code does not cure it. My suspicion is that those who run fixing will quickly find the gaps in the new technology, just as they found the gaps in every previous system. The real point is that the problems blockchain claims to solve in cricket — distrust, lack of transparency, corruption — are not technological problems but problems of power. Those who sit at the centre of money and decisions today also own the new platforms. The Indian board, the English board, the Australian board — these three centres hold the broadcast, the IP and the player pool. When tokens or digital cards sell, most of the profit flows to them, while the cost is carried by ordinary fans in South Asia and Africa. This is where I object. The technology arrives with a slogan called decentralisation, yet in cricket it risks centralising power further. The history of postcolonial cricket tells the same story: the beauty of the game belongs to all, but its revenue and decisions rest in a few fists. The story of Bangladesh gaining Test status, the story of refusing to tour Pakistan, the story of ICC vote politics — all are strung on the same note. Blockchain is not opening that fist; it is adding another layer inside it. Yet I am hopeful in one place — the soil of domestic cricket. Imagine a small club in Rangpur or Sylhet issuing its own fan token, and the money from selling it building a new pitch, buying pads and gloves. The greatest advantage of blockchain is money reaching directly, without a middleman. If that rests with a club of the soil rather than a big board, the technology is truly democratic. The fear is that the big boards will seize that door before anyone else. Last month I watched a New Zealand match from my home in Liverpool. On the screen were the numbers of fours and sixes; on my phone a digital card — of ownership, not of memory. The moment was cold, soundless. But when the match ended and I saw dust-covered bamboo stumps on a village field in Sylhet, I understood that cricket's soul is not in the blockchain; the soul is in that soil, where a boy is learning to bowl barefoot. So the question is not of technology but of will. Will blockchain open a new door for cricket, or build a new wall? The answer is not written in the code. The answer will be written in the hands of that fan, who decides what to buy with his limited money — a token, or a cup of tea from the ground's tea stall, which does not tear, but stays as memory.