Fantasy leagues are making cricket viewing transactional
More than the countries or IPL teams we support, we are increasingly becoming beholden to our individual fantasy league teams
Have you made a Dream11 team?"
That question surprised me, coming from one of my closest friends, one with whom I talk far more about culture and cinema, than cricket. As far as I knew, he’s never been into the sport. Yet here I see him assiduously making teams, looking up pitch statistics, with daily alarms on his phone to signal announcements of lineups. I find this fascinating, and remain utterly foxed by it.
He isn’t alone. When watching with friends nowadays I hear fewer full-throated roars and groans. Instead, I hear mutterings. Secretive, shifty, mutterings. “I wish Klaasen had caught that one," “Somebody should hit Bishnoi for a few," “Miller is my vice-captain, he better make a 50."
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Cricket has always been community. We bled blue or green or yellow, depending on where we were born, but bleed we did—in unison with our fathers and cousins, our flatmates and chai-wallahs. Admittedly I’m not the rabid cricket viewer I once was. Once Sachin Tendulkar walked off the Wankhede in 2013, I hung up my metaphorical boots. No cover drive could taste the same.
Yet when I watched Rishabh Pant in 2021, fearlessly conquering the Gabba and loftily punching back Josh Hazlewood, something stirred. It stirred again when I saw Pat Cummins silence a country by defeating an unbeaten Indian side at the 2023 World Cup final. This is theatre, this is cricket.
The game, however, is changing. Fantasy leagues—Dream11, MPL, My11Circle—are doing to cricket what reels and memes are doing to cinema: atomising it. Instead of supporting an actual team, we support data points in opposition. We may cheer for a decision against India because it means more points. A Chennai fan curses an M.S. Dhoni stumping because the rival batsman is on his team. The allegiance has shifted inward.
This is not fandom. I see its appeal, of course. The rush of picking those that shine against all odds and balancing them alongside the ones that will consistently get you points. It’s chance disguised convincingly as strategy. Every micro-performance is a tick or a scratch on your app’s leaderboard.
This gamification comes at a price. The players are now spreadsheets with limbs. The scoreboard is a stock-ticker. More than the countries or IPL teams we support, we are increasingly becoming beholden to our individual fantasy league teams. Our viewing experience is in danger of changing from a collective one to an individual one, where you only care about how those you’ve put in your team are faring, taking precedence over team loyalty and fanhood.
This makes cricket viewing transactional. You don’t watch a game; you work it. You grind it for points. You look up expected strike rates and recent fantasy form and head-to-head bowling matchups. You don’t cheer a team as much as you audit it.
This works perfectly for my buddy who doesn’t remember crying over collapses against the West Indies or hasn’t grown up scarred by Ricky Ponting, but for those of us who do, it feels surreal—even perverse—to watch cricket like this. It’s moral whiplash. Wanting a batsman to score a 50 and also get bowled in the next over? Rooting for a bowler to take three wickets and still get smashed for 30? You’re hedging joy against greed.
Then there’s the slippery slope of micro-transactional gambling. These apps are nearly free to enter. A bit for this match. A bit more for a bigger pool. Boost your winnings. Before you know it, the dopamine dependency kicks in like a slot machine. The margins are cruel. You might win ₹90 today and lose ₹200 tomorrow. But your team “nearly" made it, right? So you try again. Just one more match. Just one more toss. What is this other than fishing needlessly outside the off-stump, again and again and again?
I tried it once. I downloaded the app because that dedicated friend compelled me, and I slapped together a team for the price of a single rupee. I won back ₹49, which, by curious coincidence, is exactly what the app then nudged me to wager for the next round. A lucky taste to draw me back in. Instead, I took my 49x winnings, smiled, and deleted the app. (The house mustn’t always win.)
T20 leagues already resemble fast-food joints: convenient, ubiquitous, aggressively flavoured, and ultimately forgettable. A match ends and we swipe to the next. No one remembers a dead rubber. No one savours a single. We’re looking for fireworks and forgetting the fires. This fantasy epidemic only highlights how disposable the game has gotten, forcing us to make our own entertainment. Even a dull game will get you points, hurrah.
Triumph and defeat reduced to profit and loss. How depressingly prosaic.
If our primary loyalty is to ourselves and our stats, then we are taking something collective and turning it solitary. We’re trading love for leverage. Play along if you like, but be careful. If you start to care more for your fantasy XI than the one whose jersey you wear, something is deeply, deeply broken. You may still be entertained. You may even make some money (though you aren’t very likely to). Yet this is a different game, and it’s not quite cricket.
Raja Sen is a Lounge columnist.
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