3 min readUpdated: Mar 25, 2026 09:41 AM IST
Former India spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan has revealed he spent more time in the West Indies dressing room during the 1983 tour where he made his debut in the Antigua Test. Having faced a few unpleasant incidents during his time in Pakistan because of his skin colour, the 60-year-old says he was more at home in the West Indies.
“Everybody’s skin colour was on the darker side. They were very happy people,” Sivaramakrishnan says. The former leg-spinner then recalled how the likes of Malcolm Marshall and Desmond Haynes would take him out during the Test series.
“In West Indies I was treated very well even by the opposition, in fact my best friends were Desmond Haynes and late Malcolm Marshall, they used to take me out almost every evening. When the Test matches were going on, I’d probably take a change of clothes and have a shower in the ground and take permission and leave,” he told The Indian Express.
Marshall and Haynes took him out almost every evening during the Test series. They showed him Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados. They went to Marshall’s house and watched old West Indies matches — Colin Croft bowling, the old footage crackling.
Former india leg-spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan
Sivaramakrishnan says even Gordon Greenidge, who rarely spoke to anyone — not even his own teammates — opened up to him. “He had personally told me that this is what I went through in England and that’s why I just mind my business, play my cricket and just go.” Two dark-skinned cricketers from different hemispheres, finding each other through the same wound.
Sivaramakrishnan (back row, second from right) was part of the India team that won the 1985 Benson & Hedges World Championship of Cricket in Australia.
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Sivaramakrishnan spent most of his time in the West Indies dressing room. During lunch he would walk in, say hello to Clive Lloyd — who’d just nod his head — and sit with Haynes or Holding or Andy Roberts. Gavaskar was stunned that Roberts, who never opened his mouth to anybody, had conversations with the boy.
Having previously been part of the Indian team that toured Pakistan, Sivaramakrishnan made his Test debut in Antigua, where at 17 years and 118 days was the then youngest player to play Test cricket for India.
