Opening Doorz
“Celebrating Life”
By Moody Marty | Opening Doorz Editorial | March 26, 2026 Dear Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, After twenty-three years of occupying a seat in the elite, air-conditioned sanctum of the commentary box, […]
By Moody Marty | Opening Doorz Editorial | March 26, 2026
Dear Laxman Sivaramakrishnan,
After twenty-three years of occupying a seat in the elite, air-conditioned sanctum of the commentary box, you have finally decided to break the glass panel and jump out. It was a dramatic exit, I’ll give you that. I am just glad you did not injure yourself during this final, mid-air acrobatic act.
Yes, it is acrobatic. Because it takes a certain kind of mental gymnastics to spend over two decades in a profession (collecting the paychecks, flying the business class miles, and wearing the blazers) and then suddenly turn inward, look at the colour of your skin in the mirror, and decide that this is why you were “left out.”
Let’s be logical, Siva. If the shade of your skin were the ultimate, non-negotiable gatekeeper of the broadcasting world, you wouldn’t have been in that commentary box in the first place. The BCCI isn’t known for its charity. If melanin were the barricade you claim it is, why would Carlos Brathwaite, a man whose presence is as commanding as his complexion is deep, be the one handed the microphone to present Sanju Samson with a trophy during the recent T20 World Cup?
Mind you, Sanju isn’t exactly “fair and lovely” by the standards of a Bollywood billboard either. But he is dark, handsome, talented, and a deeply respected teammate. He went through his own version of professional hell (dropped, ignored, and side-lined) and he drove those demons away with the middle of his bat, not a series of cryptic tweets.
Nothing is given on a silver platter in this life, Siva. Everything is earned through the salt and sweat of the brow. And when you find yourself browbeaten by the passage of time or a change in production tastes, you cannot simply retroactively blame the system for a perceived failure to be the ‘Frontman’. That is the rigmarole of life; it is how you master the inner man that defines how you tackle the outer challenges.
You had the kind of dream run that young boys in the gullies of Chennai would trade their souls for. You were the youngest debutant in 1983 at St. John’s, Antigua, at just 17 years and 118 days. Most cricketers spend their entire youth just trying to get a look-in at a Ranji Trophy camp. I certainly did. I spent my nights dreaming of touring the West Indies in 1989, imagining the bounce of the Kensington Oval, but the selectors chose Robin Singh. We all have our what-ifs and our heartbreaks. You, however, were the Chosen One.
I remember watching you on a television set, a teenage wizard taking those 12 wickets against England at the Wankhede in 1984. More vividly, I remember the 1985 Benson & Hedges World Championship in Australia. You were the heartbeat of that bowling attack. You were the one who had Javed Miandad dancing down the track only to find himself stumped by Sadanand Vishwanath, who, for the record, was fair-skinned.
You sat atop that shimmering Audi during the victory lap while Ravi Shastri was crowned ‘Champion of Champions’. No one pushed you off that car for being dark. No one dimmed the floodlights during your lap of honour. India celebrated you as a prodigy. Your teammates respected you as a match-winner.
The downward spiral of your playing career, the tragic vanishing of your genius, didn’t happen because of your colour. It happened because the loop, the dip, and that agonising ‘deceit in the air’ simply stopped working. The ball started landing directly on the meat of the bat. We know there were physical hurdles; you grew several inches in a year, your release point shifted, and in the 1980s, no one had a biomechanics expert on speed-dial to fix a broken action.
That was a tragedy of timing and biology, not a conspiracy of complexions.
It is time to stop playing the ‘Victim Card’ and start living out the reality of your stature. You bring up a cake-cutting incident from a Pakistan tour when you were 17, a dark chocolate cake and a senior teammate’s snide remark. Why mention it now, forty years later? And if it left such an indelible scar on your psyche, why continue to protect the culprit by refusing to name him?
The Nation wants to know, Siva.
Raking up four-decade-old wounds without providing the names of the wound-inflictors won’t get you the sympathy you seek; it just suggests you’ve been carrying baggage that should have been checked at the airport in 1983.
You were born to stand out, not blend in. God gave you a talent that made the shade of your skin irrelevant to the scorecards. If colour were the barrier to greatness, Sir Vivian Richards wouldn’t be the undisputed King of the game. If colour were the barrier to being presentable, Michael Holding wouldn’t be the most melodic voice in the history of sports broadcasting.
My perplexity regarding your need to be the one conducting the toss or standing at the presentation ceremony is simple: Why colour your prejudice?
If this issue was truly so intense that it cost you your peace of mind, where is the professional paper trail? In 23 years, have you ever sent an email? Did you ever request a formal meeting with the production heads to ask why you were being kept off-camera? If you have an acknowledgement of such a grievance being ignored, that is a story worth telling.
That is a fight for justice. But without it, it just looks like a sunset tantrum.
Look at the world beyond the boundary ropes. Look at Naomi Campbell or Alek Wek. These are women who conquered the most aesthetic-obsessed industry on the planet, not by bemoaning their dark skin, but by turning it into their greatest power. Closer home, look at our very own Nidhi Sunil, who became a global ambassador for L’Oréal. She didn’t ask for permission to be presentable; she commanded the room.
Did the broadcasters shove Usain Bolt aside?
Dark is sexy, Siva. Dark is powerful. And I don’t think anyone in a modern broadcasting suite would tell you otherwise, unless you’ve spent the last forty years quietly believing Gabbar Singh’s dialogue was directed at you personally.
“Tera kya hoga, Kaaliya?” was a line for a henchman in Bollywood’s Blockbuster film, Sholay.
You were a King of Spin. Don’t let a villain’s script from the seventies dictate your dignity in 2026. Stand up, own your career, and if there is a villain in the room, name him.
Otherwise, let the music play.
[Moody Marty: Sometimes funny, sometimes informative, always downright forthright!]
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