Blockchain in the Cricket Gallery: A New Ledger for Memory, Tickets and Votes

Before the start of the match, an elderly fan in the last row at Mirpur's Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium told me, 'Sir, my grandson says this year's ticket will stay with me forever. I tear up paper tickets, but this digital ticket... does it really stay?' I laughed, because my old camera card still has the night of the 2026 World Cup when England beat Colombia on penalties. I stood outside the stadium in Moscow for two hours talking to twelve fans; their tears, their songs, their embraces—all of it went into print. Today, some people are turning those moments into digital assets. Before blockchain entered cricket, I wondered whether feelings this big could be written in numbers. Now I see it is becoming possible; the question is, in whose ledger?

Blockchain is entering cricket quietly, from outside the field. In 2026, the International Cricket Council (ICC) launched official digital collectibles called Crictos with FanCraze. Fans began collecting match moments, career milestones and archives of old centuries. Ownership of each moment is permanently recorded on the blockchain, making forgery almost impossible. FanCraze announced $175 million in funding in 2026, a sign that capital no longer sees cricket's digital market as a fantasy. My twenty-five years of journalism taught me that every new medium reaches the newsroom first, then the gallery. This time, investors have touched the gallery first; journalists are still walking behind, asking questions.

In Bangladesh's domestic cricket, this technology is still experimental. Journalists have written for years about ticket problems, unpaid bonuses and opaque contracts. Smart contracts could be a cure for those old diseases, but with one condition: the power to diagnose must not remain in one party's hands. I have long noticed that the institution that writes a contract also interprets it. Blockchain can turn that interpretation into a logical database; but the politics lies in whose name the database is written.

For me, blockchain's entry into cricket happens in three layers. The first layer is collectible memory. In 2026, while covering a Bangladesh-India match in Dhaka, a fan outside the stadium showed me his box of old tickets. It contained a ticket from 2026, faded and folded. He said, 'These are older than my children.' Blockchain can preserve something even broader than a ticket—the data of every ball, the angle of every shot in a century, even the sound of the gallery. Collection becomes not physical storage but a countable, verifiable archive of memory. In this layer, blockchain is most human to me.

The second layer is fan tokens. In football, platforms like Socios allow token holders to vote on kit design, celebration songs and small matchday details. Cricket franchises are now memorising that model. The real power of fan tokens is creating a two-way relationship between club and gallery—the fan is not just buying a ticket but getting a small share of decisions. Yet calling that small share 'full ownership' is dangerous. The organizer of the vote collects the fan's identity and behavioural data through KYC; nothing guarantees that data will never be sold like broadcast rights.

The third layer is ticketing and smart contracts. In Dhaka, fans still need to queue from dawn to get tickets for big matches; there is pushing at the gates, and many go home disappointed. Blockchain-based tickets are unique, verifiable and unchangeable; the chance of forgery is almost zero. The same technology can govern player contracts. Suppose a young fast bowler's contract says he will get a bonus for taking wickets in five consecutive matches. A smart contract can verify the match referee's report, statistics and even ball-tracking data, then release the payment instantly. Smart contracts are an opportunity to reduce cricket's broker culture—until they turn into hidden algorithms that create new brokers.

Let me add a journalistic truth: technology can solve old wrongs, but those who benefit from the old wrongs learn to hide behind the new technology. When I started my podcast after Manchester City's 7-2 win over Stoke in 2026, the Blue Moon needed a heartbeat, not a highlight reel. That 7-2 was not just a scoreline; it was a chaotic display created by Kyle Walker and Fabian Delph's inverted positions. Today, the same applies to blockchain in cricket: if technology only shows accounts and does not hear people, the podcast and the blockchain will fall into the same trap.

Promoters say: 'Everything will be transparent with blockchain; power will go to fans.' I do not believe that, at least not as much as advertised. With small fan-token votes, fans choose colours, slogans or music; but broadcast rights, scheduling and referee appointments remain where they always were—with boards and franchises. In that situation, the token becomes a new marketing wrapper, not a new address for power. Another rarely discussed question is data ownership. I buy a ticket on my phone; I enter the stadium; I stand on the concourse; I buy food from a stall—whose data is all of that? Can a club share it with a broadcast partner? The law is still unclear.

My fear is deeper: new technology can create new inequality. Many fans in Dhaka are comfortable with digital transactions, but there are still many older fans who are afraid to buy tickets through mobile banking; for them, blockchain ticketing means moving further away from the gallery. After England beat Colombia on penalties in 2026, English and Colombian fans sang together; that moment of shared emotion can be stored as a digital record, but can anyone buy ownership of that moment without the consent of the fan who wept? This is not a technical question; it is an ethical question.

Next season, when I enter the gallery at Mirpur, I want to see how long it takes to find a seat after the mobile scan. But the bigger test is where the data gathered by that digital ticket goes after the match. I have spent fifty years learning that the beat is never just the ball; it is the people around it. Tamim Iqbal's farewell ODI, Shakib Al Hasan's milestones, Mushfiqur Rahim's patient innings—if these moments become NFTs, they become still images of a generation's soaked history. But the tears of the fan who tore his shirt and screamed in the back row will not be trapped in any token. If blockchain keeps that cry and song close, I welcome it; if it pushes people away and simply sells them, I will stand against it as a cricket lover.