Vicious turn on this pitch

L Sivaramakrishnan during the jersey launch of India’s one-day international team at Taj Lands End hotel on February 17, 2009. PIC/ATUL KAMBLE

The first time I heard of the term ‘pulls no punches', it was mentioned in relation to that eternal fighter, Javed Miandad of Pakistan. One can say the same for Laxman Sivaramakrishnan - now, more than ever. The former India leg-spinner has always been outspoken, but what he said a few weeks ago after his, "I am retiring from commentary for BCCI" X (formerly Twitter) post, was a river of flowing emotions. Siva, or LS as he is referred to by friends, spoke about how he has been discriminated against when it has come to commentary assignments. I had suspected he decided to shoot from the lip once he discovered that he was not among the commentators for this year's Indian Premier League, but he cleared the air on that. He also indicated that he missed out on coaching opportunities.

The last time we met - at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in September 2024 - when he was commentating on a Duleep Trophy game, he mentioned in passing how he had played his last Test (vs Australia at Sydney in January 1986) at 20 and his final ODI before turning 22. Come to think of it, that's no age to be done with international cricket.

The most disturbing part of Siva Slam was about him saying that the colour of his skin came into it. Siva was on commentary duty for a lot of international matches and it shouldn't be forgotten he did a lot of domestic cricket matches to come up the ranks.

His recent outburst takes me back to my interactions with cricketers who felt they could have been treated better.

In 1990, while interviewing the late Dilip Sardesai for a magazine, he insisted that I mention chairman of selectors Vijay Merchant for being behind his exclusion for the home series against New Zealand and four Tests against Australia in 1969-70. "Write it, write it," said Sardesai, during breakfast at the Bombay Gymkhana.

The first gripe interview I did as a staffer of this newspaper was of a player from the Punjab team which took on Mumbai in a Ranji Trophy game at Wankhede Stadium. He told me how he was being unfairly left out even as a senior player who was part of Punjab's 1992-93 Ranji Trophy-winning side. Lala Amarnath happened to visit the Punjab dressing room on the morning of the opening day and said to this player that he should look to get a hundred against Mumbai. The player had to tell the former India captain that he was not playing "in the best interests of the team".

The dejected player came to me the next day asking me not to print the interview, fearing a backlash from the authorities. It was too late.

Raju Kulkarni, the former India and Mumbai pacer who retired in 1992-93, the same season in which Punjab clinched the Ranji Trophy, put things in perspective in his retirement interview to me, done for The Sunday Observer.

Several pundits felt Kulkarni should have played more than just three Tests and 10 ODIs.

"For any player on tour, matchpractice is vital. It was a two-month tour and for the first month-and-a-half [on the 1985-86 tour to Australia] I did not get a single game. I was pencilled in for a World Series Cup game against New Zealand at the Adelaide Oval. I went into the game with my confidence hitting rock bottom. Despite all the obstacles, I managed to get two scalps for 28 in nine overs," Kulkarni said to me.

Last month, Indian cricket celebrated the silver jubilee of the epic 2001 Test series win over Australia. Not many know that Narendra Hirwani was part of the squad for the opening Test at Mumbai. In a 2006 interview in Indore, Hirwani expressed his hurt at not being picked. The selectors opted for left-arm spinner Rahul Sanghvi as Harbhajan Singh's fellow spinner.

"I am a very emotional person. The fact is that I missed out. They did not pick me when I could have been a success. Those who did this to me cannot look me in the eye again," Hirwani said, adding that it was he who advised Australia's chief tormentor in the series, Harbhajan Singh to bowl round the wicket for the rest to be history.

Hirwani's hurt was only five years old then. But the late India batsman-wicketkeeper Budhi Kunderan relived his pain to me in 2004 - a good 36 years after his exclusion from India's 1967-68 tour of Australia. When I asked him why he decided to leave India to settle down in Scotland, he said: "I was cheesed off with the cricket surroundings here. I was disappointed when I was dropped for the Australian tour of 1967-68. At 29, I thought I still had a few years of cricket in me. I had a pretty good run in the Ranji Trophy matches for Mysore but someone else got picked."

Meanwhile, the dust seems to have settled a bit on the L Sivaramakrishnan controversy, but he could also be known (apart from being a highly talented cricketer) as the one who dished it out hot, spicy, and ‘colourful' on his lack of commentary opportunities.

mid-day's Deputy Editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance.
He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.