Open the Spreadsheet: When Data Itself Lies

In the place where I stand as a sports journalist, a lie is nurtured every day: the scorecard tells the truth. We assume that wickets and runs are recorded by a neutral accountant. During the 2026 ODI World Cup, watching Bangladesh vs India from Dhaka, I saw the LED screen at the stadium revise the 'target revised rate' repeatedly. With each change, an updated 'truth' appeared — as if data were a living creature. That night, for the first time, I understood: the official scoreboard is not pure information; it is a pile of decisions. Beneath that pile lies Bangladesh cricket's real discomfort — who, how, and through what process the country's cricket data is being produced. Over the past decade, the word 'data' has been used like a magic spell in Bangladesh cricket. BCB technical committees, BPL franchise analysts, national team performance analysts — all speak the same language: dot-ball percentage, strike rate, economy rate, match impact score. But where do these numbers come from? At Mirpur's Sher-e-Bangla Stadium, the scorer sits in a corner of the gallery with an old laptop and paper columns. The third umpire gets video feed from a single camera. Foreign franchises use Hawk-Eye and Trackman-grade data; our domestic cricket still relies on manual entry for many matches. What does that mean? No matter how modern our analytics talk, the deeper we go, the more paperlike the foundation becomes. Human error, bias, and silent corrections — unrecorded by any rule — enter this paper system. I once read an ICC report noting that boundary measurements across countries do not follow the same standard. When a boundary rope moves even a meter, the innings' run average becomes meaningless. This has happened many times in Bangladesh's domestic cricket, but no database tracks it. Because the system that stores information is the same system where errors get 'corrected'. Here arises the question: if someone changes a match's data, the next decision is made upon that altered data the next day — selection, contracts, even BPL auctions. In other words, incorrect data does not merely create incorrect records; it creates incorrect future decisions. This is where I arrive at the technology that is the heart of this piece — blockchain. Just hearing the words makes many cricket fans roll their eyes: 'crypto' and 'NFT'. But blockchain's real power is not that token; it is immutability. Once information is written into a block, no one can unilaterally alter it. Each block chains to the previous one, and every entry is copied across nodes spread through the network. Now imagine: instead of going to a central server, every ball-by-ball data point from every Bangladeshi domestic match is written directly to a distributed ledger. The scorer, the umpire, even an independent observer from the opposing side — everyone enters into the same ledger. The moment one party wants to conceal or alter information, they would have to compromise more than half the network's nodes at once. That is nearly impossible. This idea is not new. Sportradar and Chainlink are already experimenting with sports data trustworthiness in Europe. In football transfer markets and basketball contract auctions, smart contracts are gaining use. A smart contract means the terms of an agreement are written in code; once conditions are met, payment or signature executes automatically. In cricket, the biggest use could be in player auctions. At the 2026 IPL auction, Australia's Mitchell Starc went to Kolkata Knight Riders for 24.75 crore rupees. That bidding process happened inside a room; television viewers saw only the result. But if that auction were written on a blockchain, every bid, every timestamp, even which franchise raised their hand at which moment — everything could be verified. Allegations of 'insider trading' or secret deals related to franchises are not new in foreign cricket boards; blockchain could be the answer. But auctions are not the only use. Contract duration, NOC issuance dates, conditions for joining the national team — all can be written in smart contracts. Suppose a foreign BPL player extends his return date; the email exchange between board and franchise is not verified by anyone. But on blockchain, that application, approval, and final rejection — each step's hash would be stored. When a dispute arises, no judge would be needed; the ledger would be the judge. I am not saying this solves everything; but it ensures visibility into the decision-making process. This visibility is the rarest commodity in Bangladesh cricket. Now to the question that keeps me awake at night: can blockchain actually solve cricket's data crisis? My honest answer — no, if we feed wrong input from the start. A ledger merely immortalizes the information it is given. If the scorer writes a wrong score, it goes to blockchain as wrong — only now it cannot be corrected. In technology language, this is 'garbage in, garbage out'. No matter how perfect the machine, human observational error yields equally flawed outcomes. Similarly, if a franchise owner wants to keep a clause ambiguous, the smart contract will encode that ambiguity; it will not vanish. Blockchain is not a magic wand that purifies everything it touches. It is an instrument of transparency, not a source of justice. Think deeply for a moment about Bangladesh's domestic structure. Match-fixing allegations have surfaced in the Dhaka Premier League many times; many players have been banned. BCB's response is essentially surveillance — monitoring suspects' phone calls, auditing their bank accounts. But no one asks whether there is an independent verification system for the 'abnormal moments' captured in data — for instance, three consecutive dot balls followed by a deliberate boundary. If blockchain recorded each ball's position, fielding setup, and bowler's run-up timestamp, an algorithm could detect anomalies from that pattern. That is not proof, but it is a lead for investigation — something that barely exists now. This absence of leads is what allows corruption to hide inside the game. Consider the fans' perspective. Has any cricket lover never felt that selectors' decisions are opaque? The national selection committee meets; an hour later, the captain or coach tells journalists, 'We have chosen the best XI.' But the statistics behind that 'best', fitness data, comparative domestic performance — none of that is ever published. A selection metric could be made public on a blockchain: which player's domestic strike rate, how many days after injury they returned, what their impact was in each match. The public could verify that data themselves. Seasoned sports administrators will smile at this — 'cricket does not run on democracy'. But the real question is: is that entrenched opacity itself not the root cause of our failures? In a country with no shortage of talent but a shortage of consistent decisions, an experiment in transparency is curious. Let me share my own experience. In 2026, when stadiums stood empty during COVID, Bangladesh's domestic cricket also shut down. I wrote from Sylhet about 'ghost games' — empty stands, only the sound of the ball. Like those empty stadiums, our data was also empty: how much a player ran, how a bowler's speed variation shifted across overs — these metrics began being collected in BPL much later than in England and other countries. Local systems have speed guns, but release point per ball, which zone the ball pitched in — this crucial data is still uncollected in many matches. That requires multiple cameras and data analysts at cost. Yet blockchain's core philosophy is decentralization — creating data through community participation rather than relying on a single institution's investment. If independent fan-shot mobile camera feeds from every domestic match were collected and hashed against other sources, a collective record could emerge. This lowers cost and increases participation. But I return once more to that cautionary sentence: technology is never a substitute for human accountability. Blockchain is merely a mirror; if the players are not even reflected in the mirror, what does it show? Bangladesh cricket first needs a culture of honest data collection. Training scorers, creating independent video archives, unifying national and domestic databases — without these preliminary efforts, blockchain remains only an ornament. Those who think buying tokens or NFTs makes cricket modern should first examine a DNCC-BKSP match score sheet — where handwriting remains exactly as it was in the 1980s. If the lower levels are not strengthened, piling new things atop only tilts the building; that is the law of architecture. There is also a cultural dimension. When Bangladesh achieves international success, we love calling it a 'miracle' — like beating India in the 2026 Asia Cup or England in the 2026 World Cup. Headlines declare, 'Tigers make the impossible possible'. But I, who have watched the game for twenty years, know these wins were not miracles; they were the silent correction of mistakes made over months. Coaches' late-night meetings, medical teams' fitness reports, regular care for players emerging from the Under-19 ranks — this exhausting data eventually transforms on the field. Blockchain can bring that 'silent labor' into public account; the joy of winning will not diminish, but the process behind it becomes more credible. The future I dream of is this: a ledger record from every domestic cricket match in Bangladesh containing ball-by-ball data, player fitness sensor information, even spectator attendance — an all-in-one public ledger. Media will draw information directly from that ledger; selectors will use it as a standard; franchise owners will sign contracts upon it. This is not utopia — it is technically possible. Only one barrier remains: the will of leadership. Who will lead? If BCB administrators find the courage to use technology rather than fear it, Bangladesh could become a role model not only in cricket but in cricket-data technology in the next decade. Ultimately, I hold one conviction: the future of the game is not written on the field; it is written in the invisible preparation off it. Today when I open files of old match reports, I search behind each number for the eyes of a scorer, a cameraman, or a decision-maker. The day we bring those eyes into the circle of trust is the day the scorecard becomes real truth for the first time. Till then, I sit with spreadsheets, searching for truth in number-stories. Because numbers do not lie; it is the process that generates numbers which lies. And making that process trustworthy is the true reform. The question is whether we want that reform.