From Azad Maidan to the Blockchain: Who Will Keep Cricket's Notebooks?

Hook: Page Fifteen of a Coach's Register

February 11, 2026, a Sunday. An under-14 trial on a maidan in Navi Mumbai. Seven in the morning, fog still down, dew on the cement terraces. In the coach's hands, a battered register — bound with red tape, in use since 2026. On page fifteen, one boy's name written twice, two ways: "Jayesh" first, then "Yash." In the age column, a 13 struck through, a 14 beside it. His father's name is spelled two ways as well. In four days the boy had played two trials, and both times heads turned.

Which one is his real identity? Nobody knows. The register doesn't either. Rain once got into that iron cupboard; by luck, page fifteen survived. That morning I wrote a line in my own notebook: what if this register could never be lost?

Seven years later, that question is no longer hypothetical. A ledger that cannot be edited is knocking on cricket's door — the blockchain.

Context: An Economy Standing on Paper

International cricket keeps its memory in the scorecard — runs, wickets, averages, strike rates. But cricket's bottom floor, where future players are made, keeps its memory on paper: school-league registers, district association files, the iron cupboards of clubs. Before the world knew their names, I had them penciled into a Mumbai notebook — and that notebook has no legal existence anywhere.

Where did Yashasvi Jaiswal's first four years live? In a tent at Azad Maidan, in the evenings he sold pani puri, in Jwala Singh's nets. On December 19, 2026, at the IPL auction in Kolkata, Rajasthan Royals bought him for ₹2.4 crore — a public figure, seen by millions. The seven years before it sat in one man's head and in a few notebooks. Sarfaraz Khan's father, Naushad Khan, kept a diary for years — net sessions, runs, mistakes, all written down. Cricket holds no copy of that diary.

That gap caught the crypto world's eye in 2026-22. FanCraze, per press reports, raised $100 million and struck an NFT partnership with the ICC; Cricket Australia announced that Rario would be its official cricket NFT partner. Then the market broke. Between late 2026 and 2026, the value and trading of those collectible tokens all but evaporated. The first wave belonged to collectors; the second wave arrived in infrastructure — registries, ticketing, contracts, financing.

The Core

What a ledger actually does

A blockchain is not magic; it is the design of a notebook, copied across thousands of hands. Every entry is a block, and every block holds the hash of the one before it. A line cannot be quietly deleted from the middle, nor quietly added. A district registry, its seal, and a player's ID card — three separate objects — can be tied to one thread by a single ledger. When a boy moves from Bengal to Mumbai, his age, club transfers, injuries and coach attestations sit in the same book, each change carrying a timestamp and a digital signature.

Age verification: the TW3 test and its limits

The BCCI uses the TW3 bone-age method to verify ages in junior cricket. It is a biological estimate — imperfect, but far more reliable than a handwritten birth certificate filed at a district office. A blockchain cannot replace a bone scan; it can carry one verified identity across the country. The real problem sits elsewhere: a boy files documents once in Bengal, again in Mumbai, a third time at a trial in Goa, and something shifts in every file. Put that on a ledger and the shuffling stops.

Money, smart contracts and the lesson of 137 names

In 2026 I spoke to 19 coaches across 24 Mumbai grassroots clubs and built a list of 137 under-15 players — handwritten notebook plus a spreadsheet, both. That list showed me something: boys do not drop out for lack of talent. They drop out over bus fare, the price of boots, coaching fees, and the fear of a father losing income. A smart contract is practical here: conditional money — released when a ticket is bought, when school attendance is marked, when a milestone is crossed. Anyone can see who was paid and why; who is watching is also written on the ledger. A notebook is a stadium for players who never got one — but a ledger is not a stadium, it is a deed.

The real question about fan tokens

A fan token gives the supporter a vote — which jersey, which song, which charity. It makes the bond between supporter and club more alive than a paper membership. My question is different: is fandom becoming an asset, or is the asset moving inside fandom? Football has pushed fan tokens far; cricket lags, because cricket's calendar does not belong to one board — the ICC, BCCI, ECB, Cricket Australia and the PSL open separate windows. A token gains value only when a continuous season stands behind it.

Who owns the data

Right now the data on a player's performance belongs to the club, the school, the scout, the app — everyone except the player. A fourteen-year-old's sprint time, shot speed and injury history can be sold without his knowledge. A player-owned ledger means the boy holds his own key; a club can use the data, but cannot buy and keep it. Every transfer rumour is a surface layer; I dig for the boy beneath — and a ledger can preserve exactly that lower layer, if nobody leans on it.

Contrarian: The Problem Was Never Technological

The hype says blockchain removes the need for trust. The trust that broke in cricket was not technological. The boy a selector never called had no database problem; the coach who took money to put a name on a trial list had no encryption problem. And immutability is its own trap: if a thirteen-year-old's mistake burns beside his name for life, is that justice or a cruelty on permanent record? Before minors' data goes onto a public ledger, three answers are needed — education, consent, and the right to erasure.

One more thing. When a rule looks neutral, it still rewards the deepest bench. Football's five-substitution rule turned the last twenty minutes into a war of attrition — to a squad with five internationals on the bench it is a gift; to a squad with two teenagers, a punishment. Tech rules behave the same way. However neutral the ledger, whoever can afford nodes, audits and key management gets the advantage first. The maidan keeps its own archives, written in dust and monsoon; nobody has ever scanned those.

Takeaway

Whether cricket's records end up on a chain is the wrong question. The right ones are these: who holds the keys, and who pays for the nodes? And one more — the boy whose name was written twice, two ways, in a coach's register: whose job is it to spell it correctly on the ledger?