The Silence of the Tunnel, the Hum of the Blockchain: Cricket's Unseen Economy in the Regular Season

Forty-five minutes after the last ball, I was still standing at the mouth of the tunnel. The rain had just stopped; apart from the click of spikes on wet concrete and the drip of water off the tarpaulin under the floodlights, there was almost no sound at all. The stands were nearly empty — only a few hundred people who had waited until the final delivery. One of them, a young man standing beside me, kept refreshing his phone. I assumed he was checking the scorecard. But there was no score on the screen — only the price of a fan token and the floor price of a digital cricket collectible. Inside the ground the match was over; outside it, another game was still running — a game of ledgers, silent, precise, almost immovable. That moment is the centre of this piece. I learned the rhythm in the U-18 tunnel before I ever heard the crowd — where nobody claps, where there is only the coach's instruction and the ball-boy's run. Cricket's real rhythm is made in exactly that place, in the quiet layer beyond the field. Empty stadiums taught me that silence still has a beat — and the silence of the regular season says the most. Many people treat the regular season as a heap of meaningless matches, especially in T20 leagues and bilateral series, where the real picture of the play-offs or a major tournament is painted much later. In reality, this is the stretch that lays the foundation of squad depth, fitness and tactics. The pressure at the top and bottom of the table, workload management, opportunities for young players — all of it is decided in these 'quiet' months. Looking at the results, some declare a team 'out of form'; but what is actually changing is not form, it is structure. In my notebook, a small pattern has accumulated over the last three matches. In football, pressing intensity is measured by PPDA — how many passes an opponent can play per defensive action. When a team's PPDA suddenly rises, it usually means they have either reduced pressure through a fitness shortfall or are consciously conserving energy. Cricket's closest equivalent is the powerplay field restriction and the death-over economy. If the economy in the last five overs rises by two runs, that is often a signal of mental fatigue, not just bowling skill. But there is a side of this regular season that almost nobody on the field writes about: the economics. And it now runs on two rails — one of the pitch, one of the ledger. On the pitch rail, the story is familiar. Bowler workloads in the heavy November–December calendar, turn on spin-friendly wickets, slogging in the second innings because of dew. Batters average more at home and less away — these splits speak more truth than the table. If a team can chase 220 at home but cannot make more than 150 away, then its 'batting depth' is an illusion. Over the last three or four weeks I have noticed something: several teams have lowered their powerplay scores but increased their death-over wickets. That is, they are not taking risks in the first six overs; instead they are attacking more with the ball in the last four. This is the usual strategy of teams near the bottom of the table — reducing the risk of losing rather than chasing a win. In the fatigue of the regular season, this 'low risk, low return' mindset is the biggest trap. This is where the arithmetic of building a squad comes in. A transfer or an auction pick is not just a number on a page — it changes the heartbeat of the dressing room. When someone new arrives, someone old loses a place, the bowling rotation shifts, some lose confidence. In the regular season, a team's depth is measured exactly here — not in the list of names in the squad, but in how ready the player sitting on the bench is. In Test cricket this arithmetic is even more ruthless. The World Test Championship points table relies on the advantage of playing at home, and every session of the regular season is a separate tactic. The decision to bat first on a spin-friendly wicket after winning the toss, or the first ten overs with the new ball in seam-friendly conditions — these fix the character of the match. The team that can read the quiet sessions of a Test is the one that stays on top of the December table. We must not forget domestic cricket. Ranji, Duleep, and the local leagues — this is where the next generation of squads is made. Scorers, groundskeepers, physios — these people take daily care of cricket, and their work is written about the least. The real economy of the regular season stands on their hands. Now the ledger rail. Over the past few years, blockchain has entered cricket's economy mainly through three doors — digital collectibles, fan tokens, and ticketing/payments. The ICC's official digital collectible partner was FanCraze, whose 'ICC Crictos' collection drew a strong response among cricket fans (Source: ICC–FanCraze announcement). Cricket Australia also entered an NFT partnership; its deal was with Rario (Source: Cricket Australia announcement). In European football, Socios-style fan tokens have long been a reality; in cricket, this model is only just taking hold. It is worth being clear about what fan tokens actually are. They are usually utility tokens — a fan buys a token to support a team and, in return, gets voting rights, exclusive content, stadium experiences, or virtual meetings with players. To the fan it is a badge of identity; to the team it is a calculation of revenue and loyalty. But the truth is that the NFT market cooled after the 2026 frenzy. The value of digital collectibles fell globally, and cricket is no exception. Those who thought of it as 'quick wealth' felt the shock of reality. Here lies the real lesson — assets bought in the hype of entertainment do not last, but infrastructure that is actually useful does. An easy way to gauge the size of this market is the emotion of a big tournament. On 29 June 2026, at Kensington Oval in Barbados, India beat South Africa by seven runs to win the ICC Men's T20 World Cup, led by Rohit Sharma, who retired from T20 internationals after that tournament (Source: ICC/BCCI). That night Kensington Oval was nearly full; but on digital platforms the views and transactions around the match ran into crores. Cricket's economy left the boundary of the stadium long ago — the problem is only that a large share of that money does not reach the players and local federations. In ticketing, blockchain's application is the most real and the least discussed. Preventing ticket fraud, stopping the black market, and making the accounting of resale transparent — an on-chain record is directly useful here. There is no flashy story here, only boring but necessary arithmetic. In women's cricket this picture is even clearer. In March 2026 the Women's Premier League was launched in India; the inaugural edition was won by Mumbai Indians, led by Harmanpreet Kaur (Source: WPL/BCCI). The following year the title went to Royal Challengers Bengaluru, led by Smriti Mandhana. But the market for fan tokens and collectibles has largely grown around men's cricket; in the women's game it is almost absent. And yet this is exactly where the biggest opportunity lies — because the audience in the women's game has not yet fully formed, and the best time to build a digital community is right at the beginning. Another door is integrity. The ICC's Anti-Corruption Unit works to prevent match-fixing and corruption in cricket; an immutable blockchain record can help preserve the trail of suspicious transactions and betting — although this is still at the level of possibility, not real application. Here esports taught me that the quiet between clicks can decide everything; in cricket, that 'quiet' is the gap in data that later turns into a big scandal. The structure of ICC revenue distribution, influenced by the big boards, is another silent reality. A large share of broadcast and sponsorship revenue is concentrated in a few markets, and the smaller member countries must survive on their slice. Transparent blockchain-based accounting could be a tool for small boards here — if the big boards want it. I was born in Bangladesh, work in India, and have written about Morocco. These three places have taught me that cricket never speaks in one language. In the lanes of Dhaka, cricket means one thing; on the maidans of Mumbai, another; and on a rooftop in Casablanca its face is entirely different. Blockchain's claim of being 'global' should keep this lesson in mind — the technology is the same for everyone, but the money is not equal for everyone. In Morocco's locker room at the 2026 World Cup, I learned how a team can bind a whole continent with its own story — Morocco, the first African and Arab nation to reach the semi-finals (Source: FIFA), proved that the real asset is not the product, but the identity. Cricket's blockchain strategy should take exactly this lesson. And here lies the biggest misconception. Many believe blockchain came to cricket to entertain fans — flashy NFTs, golden cards, limited-edition digital trophies. In reality, what is useful is far more mundane: preventing ticketing fraud, transparent financing for local leagues, verifiable identity and performance records for young players, and an accounting of where sponsorship money went. A fan's emotion can be sold on blockchain, but it cannot be sustained — and the real problem of cricket's economy is not a lack of emotion, it is a lack of trust. If the price of a fan token falls, the fan walks away; but if a local club transparently shows its income and expenditure on a blockchain, the fan stays. That is the difference — entertainment is fleeting, trust is lasting. There is also a counter-intuitive truth in cricket: the regular season is not 'meaningless'; it is exactly where the economy of the game is determined. Play-off tickets, the price of sponsorship, next season's auction budget — the foundation of all of it is laid in these quiet months. The team that loses a match in the fatigue of November does not just lose two points; it loses a sponsor, a young fan, a possibility. I write from the mixed zone, where the story is still catching its breath — where a player smiles wearily even after a defeat, and where the price of a token still fluctuates on a young fan's phone. These two scenes are not separate; one is the mirror of the other. Looking ahead, I am keeping three signals in view. First, whether revenue from fan tokens or digital collectibles finds a place in a board's audited accounts in the next broadcast-rights cycle. Second, who takes the first step to build a digital community in women's cricket — because the market there is empty, and an empty market is the biggest opportunity. Third, whether teams invest in fitness and data during the quiet months of the regular season, or stay busy only with the table. The answers to these three will decide where cricket's economy stands in the next five years. And for that we need not the sound of the crowd, but the patience to hear the pause after it stops — because the beat keeper listens for exactly that pause.