Those Who Write Behind the Pitch: The Invisible Labour and Renewal of Cricket Journalism

On the first morning, stepping into the Lord's press box, the teacup slipped from my hand. The scoreboard papers on the table got soaked. A veteran English journalist sitting nearby smiled and said, 'That's how it goes on your first match.' Since 2026, I have been learning that the real story of cricket never lies only in runs or wickets; it lives in the sweat of those invisible people who sit in the press box long after the game has ended. Cricket journalism is not just match reports. The bowler's foot position before delivering the ball, the angle of the batsman's shoulder, the sound of the ball reaching the wicketkeeper's gloves—stories are built from these subtle details. After 34 years in this profession, I have realised that a cricket writer's real job is to capture the pitch's atmosphere, the crowd's breath, and those moments that never appear on the scorecard. When I covered the Wills Cup for Prothom Alo, I wrote every sentence by hand. Now in the digital age I write on a laptop, but the habit remains—choosing one scene from each match, then weaving the whole story around it. At the 2026 World Cup in Kazan, watching Mbappe run, I felt as if a train was leaving a station. That feeling made it into the writing. Blockchain technology has now opened new doors in cricket journalism. Players' performance data, contract terms, ball-by-ball match records—everything can now be stored on decentralised ledgers. This increases transparency of information, but at the same time raises the question: where do those human stories live within this technological clarity? From my values, I say this: however much blockchain-based scholarships and contracts may come for youth cricketers, the role of the coach standing beside the pitch will never diminish. Technology can provide data, but it cannot provide inspiration. The real investment in cricket is not only in money or data, but in training grassroots coaches. I have a conflict about the future of cricket journalism. On one hand, artificial intelligence is producing reports quickly; on the other, readers are seeking more human stories. I believe the writer who knows how to listen to the silence of the pitch will survive. Blockchain will make that writer's work verifiable, but the heartbeat of the writer can never be copied. If in the coming years we see every match report stored on blockchain, where readers themselves can verify information, then the journalist's responsibility will increase, not decrease. To me, that responsibility is called labour—honouring every ball, every word, every moment.