Review, Record and Trust: Blockchain's Promise and Pitfall in Cricket Governance

Hook

A T20 cycle semifinal, the 18th over. I was leaning into the screen from my room in Chattogram—batter given LBW, the fielding side reviewed. On the big screen the ball-tracking projection crawled forward, and at the last instant the ball grazed leg stump. Three words surfaced on the third umpire's monitor: umpire's call. The on-field decision stood, the review was burned, and the match ended in a four-run defeat.

I have watched this scene many times from Bangladesh, but this time a different question circled. The match ended; the argument did not. The argument was never about the ball—it was about the screen. Who owns that frame? Who stores it? In five years, can a researcher, a journalist or an umpire prove that nobody altered the projection input afterwards? The whistle blew, and the rulebook started breathing.

Context

Review systems were not born from a technology festival; they were born from suspicion. In July 2026, the Decision Review System (DRS) was first used in a Sri Lanka versus India Test in Colombo. Limited at first, indispensable later. In 2026 came Real-Time Snicko and UltraEdge, catching the sound of ball on edge as an audio waveform. Hawk-Eye's ball-tracking tells us the path the ball would have taken from pitch to stumps. The ICC Men's Playing Conditions set out how many reviews exist, how they are retained, and where umpire's call applies. If the projection clips the stumps by less than half the ball's width, the on-field call remains final.

My own referee's eye first woke through football. At the 2026 Russia World Cup, watching France versus Australia at 4 a.m. in Chattogram, I saw referee Andrés Cunha go to VAR and award a penalty in the 58th minute after Josh Risdon fouled Antoine Griezmann; the match finished 2-1. That day I understood that technology does not change decisions—it makes them visible, and a visible decision can be questioned. After that I left emotional match reports for rule-based analysis, studying FIFA and ICC regulations at 3 a.m. and building a database of precedents.

Another memory lays today's foundation. In May 2026, stadiums empty, sport halted, Bashundhara Kings and Dhaka Abahani proposed 50 percent pay cuts to players, and a force majeure letter went out to 24 players. I wrote about FIFA's COVID-19 guidelines and the legal gap in South Asian contracts. One player called me, crying. Empty seats, full clauses—that image moved to the centre of my writing.

Core

Now to the real question. If this is a game of rules and evidence, where does the evidence live?

Every review is built from three separate layers. The first is physical: ball trajectory, Snicko audio, crease position—the raw material of sensors and cameras. The second is interpretation: the third umpire's decision, the reading of which frame shows what. The third is verdict: the on-field umpire finalises, the review is retained or lost, a code-of-conduct charge follows or does not. In practice these three layers never collect in one place. Raw material sits on a production truck's server, interpretation sits in a broadcast clip, verdict sits in a match referee's report. Nobody can verify the whole chain at once.

This is where blockchain's real job must be understood: not fabricating video, but creating a timestamped, tamper-evident fingerprint of every review. Ball-tracking output, a hash of the UltraEdge audio, the third umpire's final call—all of it can be written into one block. If someone later changes a byte, the hash breaks, and that break is the proof of integrity. Just as anti-doping writes a chain of custody for every sample, cricket's review data needs an equivalent record. A hash does not judge; a hash only records who decided what, when, and on which input. The slow-motion replay rolls on the screen, and the law watches quietly.

The review-retention rule is itself a strategic weapon. A successful review survives, a failed one is burned—and that arithmetic has turned a player's decision from a purely legal act into a team tactic. Late in an innings a side deliberately burns a review so that cover remains for the next over. Here blockchain can offer something new: a public pattern of review usage across a tournament. Which side reviews which umpire, how often, in which over—this data is centralised nowhere today.

The match referee's report and the code-of-conduct layer matter no less. After the verdict come charges, hearings, sanctions. In that whole process the player and the umpire are both witnesses, yet no single system preserves the testimony. A timestamped ledger does not merely store proof; it shifts the balance of power between parties, because the weaker side then holds evidence too.

The second area is more urgent, and here blockchain is plain politics: player registration and contracts. International transfers require an NOC, board approval, image rights, injury clauses, performance bonuses—all on separate paper. Those 2026 force majeure letters were a mixture of paper and verbal assurance. No player knew what was owed under which condition, and nobody kept proof.

A smart contract cannot feel a pandemic, but it can code a trigger and an escrow. What happens if matches stop, what percentage of pay is automatically released, after how many days a dispute goes to resolution—all of this can be written in advance. In South Asian cricket, where the information balance between agents, franchises and boards is brutally unequal, a public ledger can at least strengthen a player's weak position.

There is one more place where I feel this need acutely—young players. An early-maturing teenager's body is not finished, yet they are pushed into senior rhythms; overload, injury, form, all under pressure. If workload and injury clauses sit transparently in a contract ledger, a 19-year-old fast bowler's shoulder gains a real basis for protection. This needs no sentiment; it needs accounting justice.

The third area is governance, especially Gulf-funded leagues and Asian Cricket Council processes. Gulf money, South Asian labour, European broadcast—fan trust does not stand in one place between these three. I believe that where institutional transparency is weak, blockchain is not a substitute for trust but a tool for creating pressure on trust. If a board writes players' arrears, contract terms and payment dates into a public ledger in advance, the cost of breaking a promise rises. Promises are not stopped from breaking, but the evidence of the break remains. ACC and ICC approval processes then stop being a matter of press releases and become verifiable documents.

One thing needs to be made clear. In eighteen years of watching, I have seen that cricket's big crises rarely come from a lack of technology; they come from the question of who operates it. In 2026 I ran a page called BDCricTeam, and I learned then that verification is harder than speed. The same holds for blockchain. If the chain sits on one broadcaster's private server, and read access belongs only to the ICC, then it is not a blockchain—it is another database with a new name.

Contrarian

Now the part technology enthusiasts do not want to hear. Immutability and justice are not the same thing. If a third umpire makes a wrong call, a blockchain will preserve that wrong call forever—it will not correct it. There is a more dangerous possibility still: someone will say, the record states it, and the question will be shut down.

The half-ball tolerance of umpire's call is not a natural law; it is a human compromise. Frame rate, camera angle, the error margins of a ball-tracking model—commercial companies set these, and broadcasters have an interest in long reviews, because a long review makes good television. Viewers want tension, producers want an ad break, and the claim of neutrality is left sitting between them.

I do not distrust technology, but I want its operators held to account. What is the error margin of Hawk-Eye or UltraEdge, and who independently tests it? Who edits a review's audio clip before broadcast? Without answers to these, a blockchain ledger is only cosmetics on a clean image. My accountability threshold is here: if independent audit shows a tournament's review-data chain of custody genuinely intact, and error rates are openly acknowledged, then I will call it real reform. Not a claim—an audit. That is my standard.

Takeaway

Next tournament, someone may publish a verifiable ledger of reviews, or the same argument will return in new colours. The fan's question will stay simple: did what I watched actually happen? If the answer depends only on a broadcaster's goodwill, the game will rest on editing, not justice. The start should probably not be the sacred video, but the ordinary ledger of contracts and payments.