Cricket's Ledger and the Blockchain: The XI That Was Never Indexed

Cricket's Ledger and the Blockchain: The XI That Was Never Indexed

May 2026. MA Aziz Stadium, Chattogram. In block three of the gallery, I am holding a folded scorecard, one corner torn away by the wind. An Under-16 match—Chattogram Abahani versus Sheikh Russell Krira Chakra. The game ended forty minutes ago. I look toward the dressing room and see the boys packing their bags, some hoisting bat covers onto their shoulders. The numbers are still glowing on the scoreboard. But where will those numbers go in five minutes? Not into a database. Not into a newspaper archive. Only into my notebook.

That day a left-handed top-order batsman made 67 off 48 balls—two sixes square of the wicket, the rest built on patient strokeplay. And an off-spinner took 3 wickets for 21 runs in 9 overs. Both names are still written in my notebook. Search for them online and you will find nothing. I went looking for a score and came back with a sediment layer. This piece is about that sediment—about the XI that was never indexed.

I made my ODI debut for the national team in 2026 and played until 2026. After that I picked up the pen. I am sixty-seven now. Over these long years one lesson has set into my skull like stone: cricket is indeed a game of records, true—but who keeps the record, where it is kept, and who gets lost, is a question nobody asks. Today I will ask it, and in answer I will bring in a modern word—blockchain.

We need the context first. In Bangladesh's domestic cricket, the process of losing information has become so normal that no one objects anymore. Matches outside the Dhaka Premier League, Under-14, Under-16, district-level tournaments—their scorecards are written on paper, then enter a cupboard, then who knows where. Club offices change, staff change, and the papers disappear. I have personally gone looking for five years of scorecards from three Chattogram clubs and found that not one had a complete digital copy. Some will ask, what harm does it do? The harm becomes visible when a boy loses his stipend, or a team cannot prove its own merit.

Remember 2026. The pandemic emptied the grounds and youth cricket nearly froze. Chattogram Abahani's Under-18 side was on the verge of closure. I dug out five years of the club's accounts, spoke to twelve coaches, and found that seven of twenty-two youth players had lost their stipends. No one knew exactly how much money was frozen, because there was no central ledger. I wrote the story and named the figure in taka. The club restored three stipends. Here is my core point: the silent XI are not absent; they are unindexed.

Now imagine if that ledger sat in an immutable digital book—where every player's name, date of birth, registration number, club, contract and stipend amount lived in one place, written once and impossible to erase. This is where blockchain becomes relevant, and this is where I must speak very carefully, because I do not want this piece to become an advertisement for a technology.

Core Analysis

First, let us be clear about what a blockchain actually is. It is not magic. It is a kind of distributed ledger, where data is written in many places at once, and once written, any change requires the consent of the whole network. In cricket terms, it is a scoreboard that two hundred people around the ground are writing simultaneously; if one person tries to shave off a run, the other nineteen catch him.

Now look at exactly where cricket administration needs this kind of ledger. First, player registration. When a boy enters an Under-14 side, his age must be proved with a birth certificate. Age-fraud allegations are not new in Bangladesh, and every time the allegation comes from suspicion rather than proof—because the original document is locked in some club office. If a date of birth and registration number sat in an immutable ledger, every age dispute would be settled in minutes.

Second, stipends and contracts. In my Silent XI affair, the biggest problem was that no one knew who was being paid and who had been cut off. If every stipend payment were written into a public-but-anonymised ledger, the gap could not be hidden. One figure is worth remembering here: across the five years of accounts I combed through, the average monthly allowance a youth player received was less than a local club's monthly water-and-electricity bill. That figure was never known, because there was no central account. Before the transfer fee, there is a boy and a bus timetable—and no one keeps the ledger of the bus ticket.

Third, transfers and NOCs. In Bangladesh, when a youth player moves from one club to another, the paperwork required has produced endless disputes. Who signed the contract first, who signed later—the argument is settled by looking at paper, but the copies sit in two club offices, and the two copies never quite match. If a transfer's date, time and terms were written once into an immutable ledger, no one could later alter the date. I have watched at least fifteen such disputes over thirty years, and in almost every one the problem was the paperwork, not the player.

Fourth, match data. This is my deepest sorrow. If an Under-16 match's score is not recorded digitally, it is erased from history. I have innings figures written by my own hand that exist in no database. If every domestic match's score were written into a distributed ledger, a full picture of Bangladesh's youth cricket could be recovered today. Every academy pitch is an archaeological site with floodlights.

Now the practical question. Is blockchain the answer to all of cricket's problems? No. And I am suspicious of anyone selling it as such. Because I have seen that the problems in cricket that are said to be solved by technology are almost always problems of administrative will.

One example. When I questioned Chattogram Abahani's Under-19 side's 3-4-3 formation in 2026, I waited two weeks before publishing. I collected ten matches of data. Goals rose by twelve percent, but goals conceded on the counter rose by eighteen percent. I spoke to three young defenders who were struggling with the wing-back role. Then I wrote. The coach later reverted to a back four. The lesson is clear: a formation is a rumor until the youth team proves it. The same rule applies to technology.

This is blockchain's greatest weakness—it protects what has been written, but it cannot create what was never written. If no one records a match's score, the blockchain will not invent that score. This is the 'garbage in, garbage out' problem. In my Silent XI affair the core crisis was frozen stipends—that was not a technology problem, it was a problem of hidden accounting. An immutable ledger would break that secrecy, but to build the ledger, someone must first decide that all transactions will be public. Technology does not make that decision; people do.

Contrarian Angle

Now the part I find most uncomfortable to write. In cricket, blockchain talk usually lands in one of two places—fan tokens and NFT collectibles, or big-league sponsorship deals. I consider neither to be a real solution.

Think about it. An Under-16 player's monthly allowance is frozen, while in the same city someone is selling an NFT card wrapped in gold, made from some old photograph. Which is needed first? The answer is obvious, but market interest points the other way. Because money comes fast from NFTs, while fixing stipend accounts takes patience and administrative will. Here I see a selective memory in so-called innovation—what glitters is remembered, what is accounting is forgotten. The ledger remembers what the highlight reel forgets.

Another point. Blockchain is called a 'trustless system'—meaning no middleman must be trusted. But in cricket the problem is not a lack of trust; the problem is indecision over who writes the data and who gets to see it. If a district tournament's score in Bangladesh is to enter a distributed ledger, it needs an organised local node, a trained scorer, and a minimum internet connection. Many academy grounds in Chattogram still lack reliable electricity; talking about server nodes there sounds absurd. Technology never puts a bat into a boy's hands; a coach and a bus do.

So my warning is this—blockchain may be a suitable tool for cricket's ledger, but it is no talisman. If no one first decides that all youth contracts, stipends and transfers will be written into a public ledger, then blockchain will remain an expensive, shiny game. The rule I learned from waiting two weeks applies here too: I will believe a trend only when at least eight matches or eight real events prove it.

Toward a Takeaway

I am no technologist; I am an accountant—one who has written cricket's ledger by hand for four decades. I know a notebook never speaks truth on its own; the truth is spoken by whoever writes in it. If blockchain truly enters Bangladesh's youth cricket, it will enter when some club says: every one of our stipends and every transfer is open for all to see.

I have one wish. If every youth match score in Chattogram, every boy's registration, every contract were written into an immutable ledger, then perhaps in a few years someone will not ask me, 'Who was that left-handed batsman?' They will know.

Sitting inside the marquee, watching the numbers glow on the scoreboard, one question rises in me: will we build the technology, or just watch its advertisement? The answer is not written in the ledger. We must write it—by hand, in ink, and with a little courage.

(Source: the author's 2026 Chattogram Abahani Under-16 match notes; the 2026 'Silent XI' club-accounts survey; 2026 3-4-3 formation tracking data. This piece is sports-information analysis only and does not constitute betting advice.)