MPCA Brings AI Into Cricket Grants Before Selection

Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association president Mahanaaryaman Scindia said in Indore on June 26, 2026 that AI would recommend cricketers and cut bias. The tools already running that week sat in the accounts office, not in the selection room.

Emergent, a software firm split between Bengaluru and San Francisco, had spent six months putting MPCA paperwork on one platform. Mukund Jha, its chief executive, said the board already had administrative and finance tools live and was still building the player-selection piece.

The Software That Showed Up First

The Friday briefing landed on the weekend of the Madhya Pradesh T20 League final. Scindia told cameras the new stack would make office-bearers faster at reviewing every item. Then he described what was actually switched on.

Right now, we are running our finance module and grant module at MPL. So, we can see whether our finances are running in the budget or not, whether the bills are being uploaded properly or not.

Mahanaaryaman Scindia, President, Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association, speaking in Indore

That is a bookkeeping product. Jha, standing with him, was more precise still: MPCA had administrative and finance modules through Emergent and was working on a player-selection module. The association wants the same tools in district and divisional units before the domestic season that begins in September 2026. No public update after June has confirmed that wider rollout.

THE PATH FROM TALK TO A LIVE LEDGER

1. September 1, 2025: Scindia is elected MPCA president, unopposed, after serving as a Gwalior division vice-president and as chairman of the state T20 league.
2. April 2026: He tells a youth event in Delhi that India still lacks a dedicated cricket ERP and that links between MPCA and its divisions are hazy on accounting and committee work.
3. June 26, 2026: In Indore he announces the Emergent partnership, with finance and grant modules already running inside the league.
4. September 2026: The plan, as stated in June, is to offer the same system to district and divisional units before the new season.

In April he was still describing an idea. By late June the league’s finance desk was using it, because the Emergent work had already been under way for six months. The player-facing headline arrived after the back office.

Emergent Turns Hindi and English Into Software

Emergent is not a cricket analytics shop. The Jha twins founded it in 2024 and went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2024 batch with agents that turn speech into software. Mukund, a former Dunzo co-founder and Google engineer, is chief executive. Madhav, who helped ship Amazon SageMaker after a computer-science doctorate, is chief technology officer.

Users describe an app in ordinary language. Specialized agents design screens, write the front and back end, stand up databases, test the build and deploy it. Jha told the Indore briefing that people can now create apps and websites by speaking in Hindi or English. That is the product MPCA bought into, and it is why a state cricket board could get custom office software without a year-long vendor project.

EMERGENT BY JULY 2026

• Series C: A $130 million round in July 2026.
• Company price: Emergent reported a $1.5 billion valuation in July after that round.
• Run rate: A $120 million annual run rate by July 2026, per figures the company put out with the raise.
• Output: More than 12 million apps built on the platform since launch.

Delhigence AI did the cricket-specific build on top of that platform. League finance and admin teams were already using the result in June, on servers hosted in India. Jha’s public case is that institutions have odd workflows, and that apps built without a traditional engineering team can follow those workflows instead of forcing a cricket board into generic accounting software.

Our partnership aims to digitise the entire process of sports administration. This will increase transparency. We want to take this AI system to the global level.

Mukund Jha, Chief Executive, Emergent, speaking in Indore

That last sentence is the business. MPCA is a reference customer. A state association with messy grant files is a harder demo than another chatbot that ranks T20 strike rates.

Grants, Bills and the Ten Divisions

MPCA, based at Holkar Cricket Stadium in Indore and affiliated to the BCCI, runs cricket across ten divisions. Scindia’s own diagnosis, months before the launch, was that the link between the state body and those units was unclear on money and committees. The new stack is aimed at that fog.

District and divisional units apply for grants. They upload documents. The model is meant to flag missing papers, watch spending against budget, and keep a single file of who got what. Scindia said in April that a unit must apply first, and that an AI model will mark any gap in the packet. In June he added player registration, verification and performance records to the same digital pile.

WHAT THE STACK COVERS

If the district layer goes live, local secretaries will file for money through software that can bounce an incomplete packet. That shifts power toward whoever sets the checklist in Indore. It also creates a log of which unit asked for cash, which papers arrived, and which bills were late. For a board that has talked about haze in its own accounts, that log is the change that lasts after the press conference.

Scindia is not a distant buyer of this idea. He co-founded Ethara AI, a Gurugram firm set up in 2020 that fine-tunes models, and he has been building Kuberha, an AI-native ERP aimed at Indian businesses. In April he said he wanted to bring lessons from his own AI startup into cricket. The stack MPCA then showed was Emergent plus Delhigence, not those companies. The interesting overlap is the problem he keeps naming: grants, compliance, reimbursements, a single ledger.

Who Still Picks the Side?

The line that travelled was selection. Scindia said the model will read runs, wickets and other performance data, then recommend names. He also said selectors still take the final decision. If they pick or drop someone on a basis other than the numbers, they have to write down why.

We want to eliminate any potential bias in the player selection process. AI will recommend players for selection based on their performance, while the selectors will take the final decision.

Mahanaaryaman Scindia, President, Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association, speaking in Indore

THE OVERRIDE RULES AS STATED

• The shortlist: The model ranks players from recorded performance, including runs and wickets.
• The human vote: The selection committee still names the XI and the squad.
• The paper trail: A pick that ignores the stats needs a written reason on file.
• The dashboard: Selectors are meant to build sides on screen and send them to MPCA for approval.

That design does not remove judgment. It prices it. A selector who wants a batter because the net looks right, or because a coach has been lobbying, can still get the name on the sheet. The cost is a sentence that can be read later by the board, a journalist, or a player who was left out. In a state association, that sentence is a political object.

The numbers the model will see are themselves a record of who already got games. A batter from a well-funded city club arrives with a thicker file than a bowler from a division that barely hosts matches. If the software only rewards volume, it will keep rewarding the places that already play. MPCA has not published the weights, the minimum sample, or how junior and women’s cricket will sit beside the men’s T20 league stats.

Franchises Have Been Doing This for Years

Scindia said MPCA could be the first cricket body in the world to adopt AI at this level of sports administration. The hedge in that sentence is “at this level.” Player models are not new in Indian cricket. IPL teams already buy extra context on auction lists from firms such as CricViz, and at least one franchise has talked publicly about using AI to simulate lineups and auction choices. Fan-facing products now score IPL squads on chase work, death overs and matchup data.

What those tools do not do is sit on a district grant file. They do not bounce a missing receipt. They do not force a state selector to type a reason. The MPCA claim is stronger as a statement about office work than as a statement about batting averages. Treat the world-first line as a claim about a cricket board’s paperwork, and it is at least arguing on the right field.

National boards and academies have also spent years on bowling analysis, wearable bats and video feedback. That is not the same job as watching whether a divisional unit uploaded its bills. Mixing those stories is how a finance rollout gets sold as a robot captain.

A Note on File When the Model Loses

The part of this project that can actually change a selection meeting is the override note, not the ranking. Rankings already exist in every coach’s notebook. A signed reason for ignoring them does not. If those notes are stored, searchable and hard to edit after the fact, a pattern of hometown picks becomes visible. If they live in a private folder, the rule is theatre.

MPCA has not said who can read the reasons, how long they are kept, or whether a dropped player can see the file that excluded him. It has not said what happens when the model is wrong, as it will be on small samples and on pitches the stats do not capture. Those gaps matter more than the launch adjectives.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Live in June: Finance and grant modules were in use inside the Madhya Pradesh T20 League.
• Still in the shop: The player-selection module was being built on June 26, 2026.
• Human last word: Selectors keep the XI and must record non-statistical picks.
• Hosting: The league system is hosted in India.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• District go-live: No public confirmation that the ten divisions received the tools before the September 2026 season.
• The weights: No published formula for how runs, wickets and other stats produce a shortlist.
• The audit: No stated rule on who can open override notes, or for how long they stay on file.

State cricket presidents in India are not appointed by batting average. Scindia is the son of Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, a member of the former Gwalior royal family, and he arrived as the association’s youngest president without a first-class career. That biography is why a written reason is worth more than a promise of neutrality. Software cannot depoliticise a board. It can make the politics leave a mark.

Scindia Wants Other Boards to Copy the Stack

Jha said the partnership’s aim is to digitise sports administration and then take the system global. Scindia has talked about other associations borrowing the model once it works. The customer that would make that pitch honest is not another T20 league looking for a splashy selection graphic. It is a board that will let district money, reimbursements and selection notes live in the same place, with the override file open enough to be checked.

Until the selection module ships, and until the divisions are actually on it, MPCA has a working accounts product and a speech about fairness. The accounts product is the one other boards can inspect. The speech will keep travelling because “AI picks the team” is a better headline than “AI asks whether the bill was uploaded.”

The next test is dull on purpose. When a divisional unit in Sagar or Rewa files for a grant, does the model catch a missing paper. When a selector leaves out a man who topped the charts, does the reason stay on the record. Those two checks will tell you whether Indore built an audit trail or a launch video.