2 min learnMar 25, 2026 10:20 AM IST
Laxman Sivaramakrishnan spent twenty-three years as a cricket commentator however was by no means assigned a toss or post-match presentation. When he requested a producer why, the reply was direct. “He stated, ‘Now we have been instructed by our bosses to not put you.’ They stated it’s to do with me not being presentable.”
Sivaramakrishnan’s response: “Probably the most charismatic and one of the best within the enterprise is Vijay Amritraj. Is he not darkish?” he tells The Indian Categorical.
The person who took 12 wickets in a Check at nineteen, who stumped Imran Khan in Sharjah whereas the gang chanted his title, who was known as India’s most naturally gifted cricketer alongside Kapil Dev by Ravi Shastri — says the colourism that adopted him by means of his taking part in profession adopted him into the commentary field.
Former india leg-spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan
In the course of the IPL within the UAE, remoted in quarantine, he says the despair returned. He couldn’t go to the bar with different commentators — “They might say he was ingesting” — so he ordered drinks to the room. The hallucinations he had battled a long time earlier returned.
Just lately, he says, got here calls from the BCCI manufacturing, checking on his wellbeing by means of buddies. “It created a false hope. I used to attend for calls. It’s what I’d confronted throughout my cricketing profession. It’s what precipitated me all of the trauma. In the event that they weren’t fascinated with giving me, why name my buddies to examine on me? I didn’t wish to make the identical mistake once more. A sponge can solely soak as much as a stage, after that it’s going to break. How far more can I — and will I — take?”
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW | Why Laxman Sivaramakrishnan is pained: ‘Due to my darkness, individuals dismissed me… I wished to neglect, neglect, neglect’
He ultimately put out a tweet saying his retirement from commentary. He’s sixty now. His home in Chennai has no pictures, no trophies, no shirts from his taking part in days.
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“From the age of fifteen to sixty — forty-five years. I’ve been traumatised by all this stuff. I’ve had sufficient.”