Cricket in India is more than a sport. It functions as a behavioural system that influences how people think, decide, coordinate and spend. ‘The Great Indian Cricket Fan on Truecaller’, a new study by Truecaller in partnership with VTION, has revealed interesting communications patterns and consumer behaviour in real time that can help brands, marketers and advertisers.

The study, according to a media statement from Trucaller yesterday, underscores that cricket represents a high-intent moment, rather than a passive viewing occasion. Nearly one in two cricket viewers is active on Truecaller during matches, according to the study, offering brands access to audiences precisely when coordination and decision-making peak.

The study observes an approximately 21 percent uplift in active usage on Truecaller versus pre-cricket baselines, driven by increased calling and utility-led behaviour rather than passive browsing.

“Cricket delivers unmatched scale for brands, but scale alone is no longer sufficient. What truly drives impact is access to moments when people are ready to act. Truecaller enables brands to show up within trusted, decision-led environments during cricket, transforming heightened attention into meaningful, measurable outcomes,” Hemant Arora, VP of Global Ad Business at Truecaller, said in a statement.

Cricket has evolved into a dual-screen experience where television fuels emotion, while the mobile phone is where action unfolds. The study reveals that 76 percent of viewers use their phone while watching cricket, spanning activities like messaging, score checks, food ordering and payments, with clear usage uplift across multiple high-value categories, signalling heightened intent and transaction readiness.

“Cricket does not end on the TV screen. It continues on the phone. Because the phone is always in hand during live matches, decisions shift there. Our study shows that in these high-emotion moments, people move toward trusted utility environments to act. Calling apps and payment platforms emerge among the most trusted environments, and Truecaller is one of them,” said Archana Roche, Global Head of Measurement & Analytics, Truecaller.

The study positions Truecaller as a key decision environment during cricket, where attention, trust and action converge. These insights underpin Truecaller’s cricket season offerings, which are seeing strong adoption from brands across key categories.

“Cricket is a high-attention environment, which makes recall-based measurement unreliable. Passive mobile-behaviour measurement allows us to observe what people actually do on their phones during live matches, rather than what they claim to do,” said Manoj Dawane, Founder & CEO, VTION.AI.

The study combines passive mobile behaviour signals from approximately 12,300 cricket viewers from VTION panel who are Truecaller users and a primary survey on VTION panel of 828 respondents analysed in partnership with VTION, a digital intelligence platform specialising in passive mobile-behaviour measurement.

Primary survey fieldwork was conducted among cricket viewers in December 2025. Passive mobile behaviour was observed continuously across the March-May 2025 cricket window and benchmarked against a pre-cricket baseline.