The check finally cleared. Or at least, the promise of one did.

The BCCI, a behemoth that sits on a pile of cash so large it has its own gravitational pull, has finally decided to glance downward. After years of operating in the shadows of the world’s richest sporting body, the Cricket Association for the Blind in India (CABI) is getting a "boost." We’re talking travel, venues, and accommodation. The basics. The stuff the average IPL benchwarmer takes for granted before he’s even finished his morning espresso.

It’s a classic corporate pivot. For decades, the BCCI treated blind cricket like a distant, slightly embarrassing cousin. They’d offer a pat on the back after a World Cup win—and India wins those a lot—but when it came to signing the checks for the actual infrastructure, the board suddenly became very interested in looking at their shoes. Now, the tone has shifted. The BCCI is stepping in to handle the logistics.

But let’s be real about the "friction" here. This isn’t the BCCI opening its heart; it’s the BCCI managing its optics. The board recently pulled in roughly $6 billion from media rights for a two-month T20 tournament. Meanwhile, the players who actually win world titles for the country—the ones who track a ball filled with ball bearings by sheer acoustic intuition—have spent years staying in budget motels and taking grueling train rides across the subcontinent.

The trade-off is simple and cynical. By providing "support" rather than full, integrated affiliation, the BCCI gets the PR win without the long-term liability. They aren’t putting these athletes on central contracts. They aren’t offering the life-changing pensions that retired able-bodied players enjoy. They’re covering the hotel bill. It’s the sporting equivalent of a tech giant offering you free cloud storage while they mine your data for billions. It looks like a gift, but it’s really just a way to keep you in the ecosystem on their terms.

The logistics of blind cricket are a nightmare that the BCCI has ignored for far too long. Think about the venues. You can’t just play this game on a patch of dirt behind a mall. The acoustics matter. The pitch quality matters. Up until now, CABI had to beg, borrow, and steal time on quality grounds. Now, the BCCI says they’ll open the gates. It’s a big deal, sure. But it’s also a reminder of the gatekeeping that’s been happening for twenty years.

There’s a specific kind of cruelty in how long this took. India’s blind cricket team isn’t just good; they’re dominant. They’ve won multiple T20 and ODI World Cups. They do more with a rattling ball and a prayer than the men’s senior team does with a billion-dollar analytics department and a fleet of private jets. Yet, the friction remains in the status. Are they "BCCI players" or are they "guests of the BCCI"? The wording in the announcement suggests the latter.

The cost of this "boost" is a drop in the bucket for the board. We’re talking about a fraction of a percent of the interest earned on their annual holdings. For the blind cricketers, it’s the difference between dignity and desperation. It means not having to worry if the bus will show up or if the hotel room will have functioning plumbing. It’s the bare minimum disguised as a grand gesture.

We see this in tech all the time. A dominant platform allows a third-party dev to survive by giving them access to the API, only after the dev has proven the concept is profitable and popular. The BCCI didn’t build blind cricket. They didn’t nurture it. They waited until it was too successful to ignore, and then they moved in to "support" it.

Don't expect a sudden surge in player salaries or high-performance centers with specialized audio-tracking tech. This is about the optics of "inclusion" in an era where ESG scores and public sentiment actually matter to sponsors. It’s a logistical hand-out that solves the immediate problem of where a team sleeps tonight, but ignores the systemic problem of why these world champions were sleeping in railway stations in the first place.

It’s progress, I guess. But in the world of Indian cricket, progress usually comes with a heavy dose of branding and a very short leash.

If the richest board in the world is just now figuring out how to book a hotel room for its most successful national team, what exactly have they been doing with the rest of that $6 billion?