Ninety Days of Blockchain: A New Rhythm in Cricket Economy from Khulna's Notebook

I am sitting beside a training ground in Khulna, my ninety-day notebook open—ball speed on one side, players’ voices on the other. After the final bowling session, a young spinner took out his phone and smiled. The pace bowler beside him joked, “How did today’s performance sell in the evening market?” At first I thought they were checking selection news. Two hours later, the spinner told me that a picture from his match had been sold as an NFT collectible. He does not know where that money goes. He only knows that his ‘immortal moment’ is being traded on an outside platform. I wrote in my notebook: on cricket’s twenty-two yards, the ball used to come first and the account came later; now the account is coming first.

This is not one isolated story. In world cricket, blockchain has moved beyond the experimental corner. In 2026, the ICC partnered with FanCraze to launch the Crictos NFT marketplace, where key ODI and T20 moments began selling quickly. In 2026, IPL side Punjab Kings launched a fan token through Chiliz. Some Hundred franchises followed the same path. The goal is simple—convert fan loyalty into a measurable, tradable digital asset. In Bangladesh, these reports are often pushed into a corner called cricket technology. But outside stadiums in cities like Khulna, those words are now heard every day. The BCB still has not announced an official fan-token project; in the language of my notebook, the board is still waiting for the first beat.

The real potential of blockchain is not this NFT story. Across my ninety-day notebook, the question that keeps growing is transparency in contracts and payments. Imagine a domestic player who is contracted for six matches in a season. The agreement exists, but money comes irregularly. I remember 2026. When the league stopped during the pandemic, fourteen players in Khulna went nearly five months without full pay. At that time I wrote a report titled ‘The Silent Training Ground’; I withheld names because safety and employment mattered. A blockchain smart contract could change that scene. If a wallet-based contract says—40,000 taka goes to the player’s wallet within 48 hours of being named in the XI—then money would no longer depend on the owner’s goodwill or an agent’s accounting. The transaction would be visible on the ledger, so denial becomes difficult. This is not a complete solution, but it reduces post-cricket uncertainty for a district-level player.

Blockchain is also becoming relevant in fighting match-fixing. The dark path of match-fixing never ends in a single transaction. To find suspicious betting patterns, you need an uninterrupted trail of money movement. Every blockchain transaction carries a time, an amount, and a wallet address. Many boards can now use such ledger data to find disciplinary gaps. But this must be balanced with privacy and player rights. Otherwise the same technology becomes a surveillance machine.

A board’s accounts include more than players’ salaries; physios, analysts, net bowlers—all their labour is mixed into the product. In my notebook I map these invisible people. Blockchain offers a way to map that labour too. If a video analyst’s clip is used in match preparation, the credit and royalty could be handled by a smart contract. Ninety days in one notebook taught me to trust the drills; the same applies to blockchain. The worker who prepares the net-bowler list every morning, the physio who records every injury—if their work is written into the ledger, it becomes difficult to deny that labour.

After years of watching matches, I have seen how unevenly sponsorship flows in Bangladesh’s domestic cricket. Some clubs in Dhaka or Chattogram get big sponsors; clubs in Khulna, Rajshahi or Barishal must bargain year after year. The fan-token idea could reduce that distance. If a club launches its own token, supporters can buy it directly; the club can then spend that money on junior bats, bowling machines, or medical fees. This creates an independent income lane for mid-sized clubs. In South Africa’s SA20 or Australia’s Big Bash, franchises are using blockchain to build new revenue from tickets and broadcasts. In Bangladesh, the real discussion is still outside the stadium.

There is another layer—player identity and age records. Domestic cricket frequently hears age-fraud stories. A blockchain-based identity record can bind birth certificates, school records, and district council registrations into one chain; each entry carries a timestamp and is not easily altered. That offers a way to reduce selection committee errors, but it requires a privacy policy. I watch for the second beat because the first one is always public. The first age-fraud story reaches the newspaper; but the real account is found in the silent mismatch in registration.

Here lies the gap between the outside story and the inside account. Outside, the publicity says—NFTs will make cricketers rich overnight; fan tokens mean every franchise benefits equally. Behind that romantic story are economic inequality and sustainability problems. The big stars whose NFTs sell are standing not only on talent but on existing brand wealth. What about a district-level bowler whose jersey carries no sponsor logo? If his picture sells on the same platform, who guarantees his revenue share? Many platforms use big names to attract attention, but their cost accounting for small clubs and players is not transparent. Another misconception is that blockchain means no risk. If crypto prices suddenly fall by 30 percent, fan-token prices also fall; then club treasuries suffer. Many projects are just memorabilia sales, not long-term sustainable structures.

When Khulna’s players went unpaid for five months, I did not publish names. That was a safety decision in journalism, not an attack on a club. The same caution is needed in the blockchain discussion. It is easy to draw a blockchain solution on paper, but to enter the field, you need agreements and consent from physios, analysts, security staff, and net bowlers. Technology is not a single company logo; it is an engine of trust. To start that engine, the least-heard voices must also be written into the ledger.

I kept the beat of the training ground before I named the story. I am not naming it this time either. In the next ninety-day notebook I will look for three signs: whether the BCB launches a small pilot for domestic match fees on smart contracts; whether any club spends fan-token income on training infrastructure; and whether a written policy appears on player revenue sharing. Without those three signs, the notebook will contain only hype. If they appear, then on Bangladesh’s cricket economy, the account and the ball will run at the same time.