BCB's Blockchain Pilot: Cricket's Ledger Goes Immutable, But Is the Data Immortal?

The Bangladesh Cricket Board's 'Project Amar-Lipi' proposes a blockchain-based ledger for domestic cricket — every ball, every review, every contract sealed in an immutable chain. As a BCB adviser and transfer market administrator, I sat through the May 2026 committee meeting where the 64-match pilot was debated. The promise is tempting: no more disputed scorecards. If a ball is recorded, it cannot be quietly changed later. But my decades of auditing cricket data tell me a deeper truth — an immutable record preserves errors as faithfully as it preserves truths. The pilot uses Hyperledger Fabric across four domestic T20 tournaments, with nodes in Dhaka, Chattogram, Sylhet and Rajshahi. It connects match data to player contracts, fitness reports and transfer fees — a true custodian's archive. Still, I raised three concerns. First, who guarantees that the human feeding the ledger is accurate? A wrong 'out' call, once chained, becomes immortal. Second, data ownership remains opaque; a consortium of BCB, franchises and tech vendors will control the nodes, and that is a constitution written in haste. Third, 64 matches is a small sample; Morocco's seven World Cup matches taught me never to extrapolate from a splinter of data. I support the pilot on three conditions: a transparent correction protocol, public access to match reports, and an independent audit before any permanent expansion. The ledger will not argue; it waits for the sample to grow. Next June we will see — not whether blockchain works, but whether cricket's custodians are ready for the responsibility it locks in.