‘Why does BCCI production house call my friends to check on me if they don’t want to give gig?’ Sivaramakrishnan on why he ended his commentary career

When Laxman Sivaramakrishnan asked a producer why he was never assigned a toss or post-match presentation in 23 years, the answer was direct. "He said, 'We have been instructed by our bosses not to put you.' They said it is to do with me not being presentable.”

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan spent twenty-three years as a cricket commentator but was never assigned a toss or post-match presentation. When he asked a producer why, the answer was direct. “He said, ‘We have been instructed by our bosses not to put you.’ They said it is to do with me not being presentable.”

Sivaramakrishnan’s response: “The most charismatic and the best in the business is Vijay Amritraj. Is he not dark?” he tells The Indian Express.

The man who took 12 wickets in a Test at nineteen, who stumped Imran Khan in Sharjah while the crowd chanted his name, who was called India’s most naturally gifted cricketer alongside Kapil Dev by Ravi Shastri — says the colourism that followed him through his playing career followed him into the commentary box.

During the IPL in the UAE, isolated in quarantine, he says the depression returned. He couldn’t go to the bar with other commentators — “They would say he was drinking” — so he ordered drinks to the room. The hallucinations he had battled decades earlier returned.

Recently, he says, came calls from the BCCI production, checking on his wellbeing through friends. “It created a false hope. I used to wait for calls. It is what I’d faced during my cricketing career. It is what caused me all the trauma. If they were not interested in giving me, why call my friends to check on me? I didn’t want to make the same mistake again. A sponge can only soak up to a level, after that it will break. How much more can I — and should I — take?”

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW | Why Laxman Sivaramakrishnan is pained: ‘Because of my darkness, people dismissed me… I wanted to forget, forget, forget’

He eventually put out a tweet announcing his retirement from commentary. He is sixty now. His house in Chennai has no photographs, no trophies, no shirts from his playing days.

“From the age of fifteen to sixty — forty-five years. I have been traumatised by all these things. I have had enough.”

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Laxman Sivaramakrishnan spent twenty-three years as a cricket commentator but was never assigned a toss or post-match presentation. When he asked a producer why, the answer was direct. “He said, ‘We have been instructed by our bosses not to put you.’ They said it is to do with me not being presentable.”

Sivaramakrishnan’s response: “The most charismatic and the best in the business is Vijay Amritraj. Is he not dark?” he tells The Indian Express.

The man who took 12 wickets in a Test at nineteen, who stumped Imran Khan in Sharjah while the crowd chanted his name, who was called India’s most naturally gifted cricketer alongside Kapil Dev by Ravi Shastri — says the colourism that followed him through his playing career followed him into the commentary box.

During the IPL in the UAE, isolated in quarantine, he says the depression returned. He couldn’t go to the bar with other commentators — “They would say he was drinking” — so he ordered drinks to the room. The hallucinations he had battled decades earlier returned.

Recently, he says, came calls from the BCCI production, checking on his wellbeing through friends. “It created a false hope. I used to wait for calls. It is what I’d faced during my cricketing career. It is what caused me all the trauma. If they were not interested in giving me, why call my friends to check on me? I didn’t want to make the same mistake again. A sponge can only soak up to a level, after that it will break. How much more can I — and should I — take?”

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW | Why Laxman Sivaramakrishnan is pained: ‘Because of my darkness, people dismissed me… I wanted to forget, forget, forget’

He eventually put out a tweet announcing his retirement from commentary. He is sixty now. His house in Chennai has no photographs, no trophies, no shirts from his playing days.

“From the age of fifteen to sixty — forty-five years. I have been traumatised by all these things. I have had enough.”