Flight of fantasy or reflections of passion? Knowledge, skill and fantasy cricket

Abstract

Fantasy sport has become a digital rage in the US and several European countries, while its presence has started to be felt in India in the 2010s with the expansion of smartphone technology. As the number of Indians playing fantasy cricket has exponentially grown over the last few years, concerns over the game being a front of organized online gambling has surfaced. In this article, I will explore the question whether or not fantasy cricket is a game of skill. I will analyse the extent of knowledge required for excelling in fantasy cricket in view of the ‘glorious uncertainty’ of cricket and the need to account for luck in any gameplay. Using the methods of autoethnography and phenomenology, I will study fantasy cricket as an object of my experience and offer an interpretive personal account to mediate a discussion about the extent to which knowledge is important in fantasy gaming success.

Keywords:

• Fantasy cricket
• digital sport
• technology
• autoethnography
• phenomenology

Acknowledgements

The author thanks St. Chad’s College, Durham University, and its Principal Margaret Masson for offering him a fellowship that enabled him to carry out the research for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.