It is hard for anyone in the blockchain or the gaming world not to have noticed Jump.trade’s Meta Cricket League. As most of you may have seen in the tabloids or on social media or even through word-of-mouth or your favorite YouTube channel, Meta Cricket League is the world’s first P2E cricket game. Meta Cricket League, abbreviated MCL, has already made big waves and has also received endorsements from prominent cricketers like Harbhajan Singh, Chris Jordan, Mithali Raj, and some quasi-cricket personalities like Mayanti Langer.
When people around the planet, including all NFT and gaming experts, have been exploring games related to hunting, capturing territories, breeding, and battles, you all must be curious to know why we went behind cricket, right? Well… We are here to demystify and unravel the thoughts that went behind the creation of MCL.
As you may have known, Jump.trade is the manifestation of the lofty-yet-achievable dreams of GuardianLink. GuardianLink might not have been a pioneer but it is undoubtedly a game-changer when it comes to the Indian NFT scene. GuardianLink powered India’s first-ever limited rare-art NFTs featuring Bollywood‘s biggest celebrity Amitabh Bachchan. They also launched the NFTs of Stan Lee’s Chakra the Invincible. All the aims of GuardianLink always culminated in their core philosophy which was about making NFTs available for everyone, making them more affordable, and creating a dependable and reliable NFT ecosystem in the long run, especially for a market like India.
Undoubtedly, Bollywood is an emotion that unites India. Another emotion that has an equal magnitude of power when it comes to uniting (or in the case of the Indian Premier League, dividing!) India is cricket. Let us all admit it… You don’t find people wearing jerseys of their favorite players for any other game in India. We are not just talking about fans who are enthusiastic. We are talking about fans who are crazy and who will do anything for the sake of the game and for the sake of the heroes in the game. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most people have thought about becoming a cricketer in their life at some point in time, and they have, even while playing street cricket, tried to replicate the bowling action of Shane Warne or Glenn McGrath or the betting action of Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli. Yes… You read that right. India is not just about Indian cricket but about global cricket.
When cricket is such a powerful emotional glue for the country, people are bound to be triggered by that emotion in whatever form and frame it comes in. Our thought was why not infuse the emotional force of cricket with the technical force of NFTs?
To be brutally honest, we are not the pioneers of this thinking. We have seen a few other brands release a lot of cricket-focused NFTs like video moments and card collectibles. Most sports collectibles/NFTs belong to this category.
Another dimension of NFTs that was slowly gaining traction was the NFT gaming scene. People in the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam had started to consider NFT gaming as a means of livelihood rather than just looking at it as something confined to entertainment and fun. It was quite clear that spending time in a game, when it gives you tangible rewards that have utility in the real world, (or in simple words, “cash rewards“) are bound to be successful.
And this brought about MCL as a very nascent idea. We knew that the idea had all the potential to make it big but it needed a lot of fine-tuning and maturity. We set on a task to make this a workable, dependable, lucrative, and enticing idea for anyone who participates.
In all our pockets of uncertainty, one thing was sure. This idea was bound to create big waves across the world of both cricket enthusiasts and NFT collectors.
On paper, it seemed quite easy to bring about a cricket game using some NFTs representing certain assets in the game. We wanted to take it well beyond what could be perceived by a normal person who would want to reinvent cricket for the world of NFTs. We expanded the horizon for thinking about what could be presented as NFTs… And then came the long list:
We created NFTs out of cricket players with different skill sets. This would mean that our players/users can purchase NFT players to play in the game. Each player had a default set of attributes and properties that made them play the game at a certain level.
Then came the cricket bats! Bats have been considered to be one of the most valuable assets when it comes to the world of cricket. Such was the importance and impact of cricket bats that a lot of people thought that MRF manufactured cricket bats and not tires only because of Sachin Tendulkar. We also created NFT cricket bats and some of these bats are quite special because they have been signed, authenticated, and endorsed by some of the most prolific cricketers from around the world. And did we also mention that we had a very special category of bats signed by multiple players from iconic events… The 1983 cricket World Cup finals, 2003 cricket World Cup finals, and the 2011 cricket World Cup finals?!
Just imagine how exciting it is to play your digital metaverse cricket with the very bat that is signed by your favorite legend? This is precisely what we wanted to give our users… And this is what inspired us to create the various categories of NFTs for metaverse cricket.
We decided to stretch the boundaries beyond what anyone might have imagined. Why should cricket be confined to players and bats?! Why not cricket stadiums?! This instigated us to create metaverse cricket stadiums and a completely decentralized metaverse cricket ecosystem. Although it might not be available right now, we surely have it as a part of the roadmap… And it will not be long before you can flaunt your fractional ownership of metaverse cricket stadiums.
As you may have guessed, the MCL NFTs have been designed in such a way that it is playable, collectible, investable, rentable, and everything that you would want an NFT to be. It caters to almost all segments of the audience who could possibly want to explore the world of games, investments, NFTs, crypto assets, digital collectibles, and just plain excitement!
The way the MCL NFTs were received was quite evident in the fact that more than 52,000 NFTs were sold in a span of fewer than 9 minutes. Even today, we can see a lot of enthusiastic NFT collectors and prospective metaverse cricket players collecting and trading the MCL NFTs, gearing up to play the game.
The launch of MCL is just around the corner… And all those enthusiastic collectors and players are going to see tremendous utility for the NFTs they have purchased.
As much as our fans and collectors, we eagerly await the launch of MCL! If you are one of them, it would be a great idea for you to join our active and robust community on Discord!