The toxic masculinity and environment of misogyny led to me dropping out of cricket, and they remain an obstacle that prevents me from feeling comfortable in playing again, whether it is semi-professionally or even just recreationally.

I wear nail polish now, and it's been a difficult experience to be visibly queer when I go to games. It's obviously varied, and spaces do vary in how accepting they are, and how they are framed around a type of masculinity.

I was an all rounder in cricket. At first, I was a batter and medium-pace bowler, but as I matured physically and in my self identity, I never became the athlete I was expected to be.

I realized that if you want to be a pace bowler, irrespective of your statistics and skills, you are expected to be big and aggressive.

In selections, it's very much about what you can perform in five minutes with maybe three of four balls?

They take you to a selection trial with like 1000 other kids, and you're all jockeying for the eyes of like four or five mildly uninterested people.

In each of those moments, people are visibly looking for certain attributes that might not necessarily seem related to gender, but are inexplicable from gender.

I realized I wouldn't fit those screenings and I became a spin bowler, which is more about skill and craft, rather than sizing you up physically, which was always one of the biggest barriers for me.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued]