One thousand fifty crore, give or take a few by today’s calculations is a lot of money. It bowls you over. It is what the world’s second-most followed sport T20 cricket makes and complete with auction drama, data dashboards, pyrotechnics, and broadcast muscle. But away from it all has risen a parallel money machine, a unique T20 played as local cricket. Tahir Ibn Manzoor, a cricket analyst who tracks grassroots tournaments, calls it “India’s quietest cricket revolution.” Local cricket has become a business model almost parallel to the IPL, but of course on a smaller scale. “The IPL made the blueprint. Local cricket brought it to the gullies. Everything is recorded, every run logged. Every Player has a profile. Technology has professionalised everything,” he says. “That’s the power of this new ecosystem.”
Manzoor tells us about teenagers and office-goers bought at local auctions for Rs 20,000 – Rs 50,000 a season—perhaps enough to pay the rent, or provide a secondary income for others, and above all, give an identity of their own to many a small town Virat Kohli who is an electrician or computer operator. On weekends, Delhi NCR feels like it’s running its own mini-league circuit. Grounds are booked months out. Teams are sponsored by local construction firms, IT outfits and resident colonies. Matches begin with toss photos and end with highlight reels engineered for Instagram. Visibility becomes the currency that turns a weekend wrist-spinner into a local Rashid Khan. This boom extends beyond the pitch. Behind every player stands a value chain: coaches, physios, trainers, indoor facility owners, jersey printers, bat repair specialists, videographers, analysts, and vendors. As Manzoor puts it: “Local cricket is not just matches. It’s an entire supply chain. Bats, pads, shoes, physio sessions, analytics—someone somewhere is earning because a kid decided to play cricket.”
Families have recalibrated their aspirations. A decade ago, a cricket career meant uncertainty; now it feels like career adjacency. Parents no longer ask if cricket has a future; they ask how fast their child can climb the ladder. The result is a new sporting middle class that is knocking it out of the stands; but under the spotlights of a national stadium. Youth who may never become Suryakumar Yadav or Jasprit Bumrah, but are auctioned for lakhs of rupees like Simarjeet Singh or Nitish Rana, can still build a life orbiting the sport.
It all began in 2019 when cricket enterprenuer Dipak Kumar Singh sensed this untapped market. That year, he founded SportsCube Center for Excellence, Gurugram. He explaines his plan: “Structured training was no longer optional. Parents were ready to spend. Kids were ready to commit.” SportsCube began small but the demand for training was relentless. Today, 3,000 players train there with former Ranji and IPL pros; there are proper indoor nets, a playing ground, a gym and even hostel facilities for out-of-towners. Fees are reasaonable compared to the rewards: `45,000 for a two-month residential programme and `25,000 for local trainees. What’s taking shape across India is a parallel cricket economy with heroes, heartbreaks, mid-season transfers, bidding wars, spectators, scouting networks and livelihoods for those who play, train, manage and document.
And as India witnesses another frenzy—the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup kicked off on February 7—somewhere under the floodlights in Gurugram or Ghaziabad, a teenager nails a cover drive. A camera captures it. A commentator adds spice. A sponsor takes note. A team owner files the name away. One clip, one contract, one kid at a time—the new cricket economy keeps moving.
On a chilly Friday at Gurgaon’s Nawada ground, 23-year-old Amaan Alvi walked back to the boundary, six runs short of a fifty. He scored 44—crisp drives, busy singles, and a late cut that drew applause from strangers leaning on motorbikes. “I wanted that 50,” he rues. “But a day is a day.” Moments later, he pocketed his Rs 5,000 match fee, as routine now as taping his bat. For Amaan, this is a job that pays his bills and funds his travel across Delhi, NCR, Punjab, Gujarat, and Kashmir. “This is our livelihood, our full-time job.”
What changed everything was data. On CricHeroes, a scoring and statistics app with over 40 million local cricketers, Amaan is a star with 1,500+ matches and 200+ Man of the Match awards. “Numbers speak louder than anything else,” he says, scrolling through graphs like a trader. His numbers convert directly into cash: Rs 4,000–Rs 6,000 per match in Delhi; Rs 8,000–Rs 15,000 outside NCR. On a good month, he makes Rs 60,000–Rs 1,50,000. “If you’re scoring, your phone keeps ringing.”
Around him, an entire parallel cricket economy hums: umpires paid per match plus travel, videographers streaming from stabilised phones, kit suppliers selling from car boots. Grounds are booked in three shifts and owners run teams like franchises with WhatsApp strategy chats and fitness sessions. Competition is fierce. A star last week is benched the next if form dips. Outstation “pros” fly in—Punjab’s power-hitters, Baroda’s swing bowlers, Kashmir’s fearless finishers—raising match quality and prize pools that run into lakhs of rupees. Amaan is a case study in a rising cricketing middle class—players who may never play Ranji but still make a living from the sport. “I get paid to play cricket every day,” he says. “How many people get to say that?”
There is more to say. On winter evenings in Noida, when the floodlights snap on and dust rises off the practice pitches, girls walk in with kitbags. Coach Dipak says with eyes on a pack of teenage fast bowlers, “Women’s cricket is not just progressing, but is expanding at a pace that demands specialised training.” For him, this isn’t just a sporting shift, it’s economic too. “Grassroots cricket is a structured, organised, financially sustainable ecosystem. It starts at the ground level, and that business is only getting bigger,” he adds. Among those cutting through the evening haze is 20-year-old Avni Panchan, arriving straight from college and lacing up her spikes before she’s even finished catching her breath. She pays Rs 5,000– Rs 6,000 a month to train under U-19 coach Anju Bhati in Noida Sector 127, intent on pushing her way toward the national setup. “I started playing cricket at 14,” she says. “My father told me I have power in my arms. I still remember that line. That keeps me going. I want to play for India.”
Coach Bhati has trained over 40 boys and girls in five years. Cricket is his full-time living—sessions, fitness, tactics, and late-night video analysis. “Girls now see cricket as a legitimate career, not a distant dream,” he says, adding, “Families are ready to invest, and young women are beginning to dominate trials, state camps, and academy leagues.” He rattles off examples: a 12-year-old leggie with metronomic control, a left-handed opener with three fifties in four games—all stories that would have been outliers a decade ago. Almost everyone points to the same inflection point: India’s women lifting the World Cup. “Ever since that win, every week a new girl walks in saying she wants to bowl like Renuka Singh or hit like Smriti Mandhana,” adds Anju. Across the country, the effect has been electric. Haryana academies now report more girls than boys in off-season camps, Mumbai tournaments host all-girls divisions, and a tribal village in Assam built its own makeshift pitch after watching their state captain on TV.
If the rise of local cricket built the foundation of a grassroots economy, it was technology that turned a scattered hobby into an organised, data-driven sports industry. At the center of this shift stands CricHeroes—the platform that changed how India watches, plays, records, and even recruits local cricket talent. It began with one simple question: What if every ball bowled in a dusty ground could be recorded like a professional match? For founder Abhishek Desai, it wasn’t a tech problem—it was visibility. “Grassroots cricket had no memory,” he said. “Thousands of brilliant performances disappear the moment the match ended.” A survey in Ahmedabad noted nearly 70 per cent of matches were still being scored on paper, leaving talent undocumented. By 2016, Desai had mapped the market, raised seed funding, and launched the CricHeroes app, kicking off a digital scoring revolution. The core platform remains free for players and scorers, while CricInsights and pro dashboards run on subscriptions. Organisers pay for branding, analytics, streaming, and promotional slots. “We wanted to empower every player,” says Desai, “and for organisers who wanted a professional edge, we provided the full commercial suite.” Digitising every ball gave amateur players something they never had. “We didn’t just make an app. We created identity,” he adds. “A boy in a small ground suddenly had statistics, rankings, followers, and recognition.” Today the numbers are staggering: 4.2 crore players, 1.4 crore matches, 8.7 lakh tournaments. CricHeroes is trusted by state associations, ICC bodies, academy leagues, community tournaments and even small neighbourhood organisers who now run micro-IPL formats with auctions, payments, and sponsors. A new economy formed around it. Scorers get steady bookings. Umpires get work. Commentators build followings. Sponsors move from cloth banners to digital scoreboards and streaming windows. As Desai puts it, “Grassroots cricket is no longer a hobby. It is a full-scale industry.”
For players like Amaan—currently ranked No. 1 on CricHeroes—the shift is life-changing. Now, data gets him outstation contracts, match fees, and negotiations backed by evidence. “This app gave me a profile, a ranking, and opportunities I never imagined,” he says.
The same is true for officials. Mohammad Qureshi, a top-ranked umpire from Uttar Pradesh, once earned just Rs 500– Rs 800 per match. With digital scoring and rankings behind him, he now gets booked weeks in advance, earning triple the amount. “The app didn’t just record my matches. It gave me identity, credibility, and steady income.” As the space matured, other platforms emerged. In the south, Stumps, founded by Chennai-based Kathiravan A, tackled hyper-local operational pain points. “Local cricket was being managed on paper,” says Kathiravan adding, “Players give everything. They deserve visibility. They deserve an archive.” Stumps built verified profiles, offline-friendly scorecards, and simple dashboards that made even neighbourhood events run like professional tournaments. Together, these platforms didn’t just digitise micro cricket, they monetised it, organised it and turned passion into industry. Today Stumps powers hundreds of matches across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. Its user base is growing, supported by school tournaments, academy competitions, and local leagues. The scoring platform has also developed partnerships with regional brands and local cricket shops, creating a sponsorship network that supports both the app and the players who use it and even small retailers plastering their logos on jerseys, bats, trophies, and LED boards. In NCR, custom kit makers have multiplied, with names like The Boss Sports, Noida becoming go-to suppliers. “Teams want to look professional, and branding helps them feel part of a bigger system,” says owner Shubham Saudiyal. Real-estate firms are among the biggest players—buying naming rights, sponsoring Man of the Match trophies, and treating weekend tournaments as hyper-local marketing. “Brands now understand that a local cricket ground brings more real engagement than many online ads,” Saudiyal says. “People remember the names they see on jerseys every weekend.” So central is branding that teams now negotiate with sponsors months ahead, planning entire kits around logo placement. “Teams come to us with sponsor requirements first and colour choices later,” he adds.
But jerseys are only one part of the new economy. Noida ground owner and organiser Pramod Chohan still marvels at the shift. His three cricket grounds host 50–70 matches a month each. With charges of Rs 6,000–Rs 10,000 per match and up to three fixtures a day, cricket has become an employment engine. “Cricket was once just a hobby,” Pramod says. “Now it runs households. More than seventy people depend on my grounds alone.” Nearby, Prem Kumar, who runs NSRCS Sports Academy, operates at an even bigger scale—400 matches a month across two grounds, charging Rs 13,000 per match. With steady corporate demand, he earns nearly Rs 4 lakh per ground each month while sustaining dozens of jobs. “Every year the demand increases,” he says. “Families invest, corporations invest, players invest. Local cricket has become a serious economy.”
The shift isn’t just on the field. Behind it, production companies have become crucial to giving local cricket a professional face. In Delhi, Harshit Rajawat, director of Anhad Studio, runs live streaming, multi-camera setups, graphics, commentary, and post-production for matches across India. “A single match can cost Rs 15,000, and with advanced streaming and commentary, it can go up to Rs 2–3 lakh,” he says. With videographers, editors, audio experts and 30-plus commentators, his team has become indispensable for organisers who want tournaments to look like mini-leagues. “People want to watch their matches live… Players use the footage to build careers. That’s why demand keeps rising,” he adds.
This boom sits atop a wider ecosystem. Hundreds of grounds are springing up across NCR, Noida alone now has over 100. “If this business keeps growing, we will grow with it… I want people to say Amaan Alvi built his career from these local grounds,” says Alvi who is preparing for DPL. “A few years ago no one imagined you could actually earn from local cricket. Today, players like me run our daily lives because this industry exists,” he adds, branding himself in the process. Local cricket has become a theatre of ambition where careers are made match by match, fee by fee, opportunity by opportunity. The time has come when local cricket has become national cricket, but not the way you think.