Every once in a while, in every solar system, an errant moon takes up the challenge and manages to eclipse the mighty of the world, if only for a while. In that instance it announces that it is king and rules the moment with the whole world watching in awe. Every game, every sport is littered with heroics of this kind and it’s moments like these which make the sport and the feat magical, inspiring, unequalled and glorious. The fans of every sport live for these moments. Now, they can also own it.
With the launch of CricketCrazy.io by Cricket Foundation, a blockchain driven marketplace for cricket NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens), for the first time, the fans of cricket, all over the world, will have the opportunity to own the historic moments which their favourite teams or players have achieved quite in the same way as an art collector owns a great artist’s painting. Except that here the “moment” that they will own of cricket will be from the digital domain and yet the ownership will be as conclusive and secure as having a Picasso original safe in your vault. The launch of cricketcrazy.io took place with smashing moments of cricket history being put up for grabs on day one as NFTs with the thrilling announcement that such moments immortalized as NFTs will be added every day for the fans.
For too long the comparison of cricketers with artists has been just a romantic one, something that lived in the eyes of the fans. There were newspaper cuttings saved, magazines were purchased only when they knew that it had the right article or the much coveted iconic photograph, posters were put on bedroom walls, autograph books were treasured and match tickets were saved as reminders of cherished performances. They all ended up in a box under the bed as the responsibilities and priorities of life shifted to earning a living only to be moved in the basement when space became an issue. All those memories get inevitably pushed back and slowly lose relevance as you move into a world where if something can’t be monetized it’s not important. Not anymore.
The Cricket Foundation along with its several partners plans to introduce into the media library of cricketcrazy.io over 20,000 cricket media assets which the fans can own and more importantly trade through the enabling crypto CRIC. The manner in which the cricket NFT marketplace, Cricket Crazy is designed you are ensured that the assets will grow in value over time. This is a new paradigm.
This is a game changer not just for the fans but also for the players. In the era before the internet there were very limited ways to learn about your hero or the star that captured your imagination. The hunger for any detail about your ideal was never fully satiated and always left out the parts that were personal. The internet and social media changed all that. Now the players are posting intimate moments which were previously guarded ferociously and have increased their following dramatically. This exponential growth in the reach of the stars across continents at a level which is almost like being by their side in every important moment has been phenomenal and has its advantages.
In the past collectibles and memorabilia were equally hard to come by. As a fan you would see, every time a team won, players would run and grab the wickets as a reminder of the win. A memory of the game. But you always wondered what happened to the wickets when the player retired. You never ever heard of an auction of the memorabilia even when you heard of several benefit matches for legends who fell on hard times. Were these memories after retirement slowly pushed in a box under the bed from where they were moved to the basement like the memories of their fans. The average retiring age for a sportsperson is 40 which leaves a large part of life still unaccounted for.
The NFT marketplace from Cricket Foundation with its own crypto is a unique opportunity even for the players to monetize their memorabilia, their special moments, their historic achievements, everything. As the full ecosystem evolves into an interactive hub with a plethora of services being available at one point in a decentralized ecosystem that empowers all the elements of the open source community which is what this is all about in the first place, there will be no looking back. The fundamentals of blockchain will ensure that more the cricket community transacts in the marketplace the more it’s rewarded in the long term. While the decentralized ecosystem, on the other hand, will enable a never before parity and a say even for the fans who become stakeholders and decide the future of the game in a way unimaginable just a few years back.
Cricket Non Fungible Tokens are the new memories, the digital assets of a digital generation. What you can be certain of by becoming a part of this new order of things and continuing to hold on to your passions for the game of cricket by collecting NFTs, as opposed to the times gone by, is that every time a bowler casts a magical spell on the ground with a hat trick or a batter changes the atmosphere of the stadium with 6 sixers, or that match winning last ball mammoth of a shot, the moments will not just live on in memories forever but they will also GROW in their VALUE. You can without any inhibition or concern go cricket crazy.
