'I want to sleep with you': Ananya Bangar on dealing with harassment, nudes from cricketers since gender transition

Ananya Bangar, now daughter of former Indian cricketer and ex-coach Sanjay Bangar, is telling it as it is. Born as Aryan Bangar, Ananya's present comes at the cost of a very tough past she navigated single handedly. From moving to the UK to see through her gender transition to returning to India for hormone replacement therapy, it's a lot like living two lives in one, which she was anyway doing in the years she struggled to show the world who she was.

In a recent interview with Lallantop, Ananya dropped quite the big bombs with regards to the ordeals her gender change brought for her, within the cricketing community. Harassment was a recurring theme, unfortunately. She shared, "There has been support and there have been some harassment as well...There have been a few cricketers who randomly sent me nude pictures of them".

Labelling most of the community as representing and upholding toxic masculinity, she elaborated, "I played with some well known cricketers now like Musheer Khan, Sarfaraz Khan, Yashasvi Jaiswal. I had to maintain secrecy about myself because dad is a well known figure. Cricket world is filled with insecurity and toxic masculinity".

It didn't just stop there, the disappointing encounters seemed to be unending for Ananya. Sharing a saddening anecdote, she said, "The person used to give gaalis in front of everybody. The same person then used to come and sit beside me and ask for my photos. There was another instance, when I was in India, I told a puraane (veteran) cricketer about my situation. He told me let's go in the car, I want to sleep with you".

Speaking of her own journey, however, she was quite young when she started realising that she was actually born to be a girl: "For me it was when I was eight or nine years old, I used to pick clothes from my mom's cupboard and wear them. Then, I used to look into the mirror and say, 'I am a girl. I want to be a girl' ", she shared.

Interestingly, Ananya's revelations come at a time when the International Cricket Council has now barred transgender women from playing in international matches and top-level domestic women’s cricket in Tiers 1 and 2, with the England and Wales Cricket Board following suit in this regard.