‘It created a false hope’- Laxman Sivaramakrishnan on BCCI’s attempt to check on his wellbeing

Former India player-turned commentator Laxman Sivaramakrishnan has revealed that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) production team asked about his wellbeing through his friends instead of directly coming through to him. This comes after the recent accusations of racism towards the 60-year-old, which ultimately resulted in him retiring from broadcasting.

Sivaramakrishnan stated that the production team never offered him a chance to do the toss or a post-match presentation as he was not ‘presentable’. Amid the controversy, he claimed that the BCCI went to his friends to ask how he was doing due to everything unfolding in the media. 

“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 work, 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? From the age of fifteen to sixty – forty-five years. I have been traumatised by all these things. I have had enough,” Sivaramakrishnan was quoted as saying by NDTV.

Sivaramakrishnan said that the first instinct of racism he faced in Indian cricket was back when he was 14 a net bowler for Team India. Whilst entering the Chepauk a small room to change, one player asked him to clean his shoes to which the former spinner denied. He later clarified that the senior player had mistaken him for a ground staff person.

“I just looked at him and said, ‘That’s none of my business, you just do what you need to do. I didn’t know what racism or colour discrimination was. I was just wondering why this man had to react like this,” Sivaramakrishnan said.

Sivaramakrishnan went on to make 25 appearances for India from 1983 to 1987, playing nine Test matches and 16 ODIs. He went on to take 41 wickets on the international stage. He is well known for taking 23 wickets during the 1984-85 Test series against England on home soil.