Here is the answer to your comment to my question:
Yes, the reason it is null in itemcommand and works fine in itemdatabound is that the location itemcommand is not correct for reading this value. You will always get the DataItem null in ItemCommand, no matter what you do. The reason lies in the control life cycle. The control gets initialized, created and then only does any other event related to the control can fire. During control creation the CreateControlHierarchy is called which then uses the DataBind event to create and databind the child controls. At that time the DataItem is live and is not null. Before that and after that it is always null, because its role lies only for that much time span.
By the way the DataItem you are looking at is the item from the related datasource that is being used to databind the listview. The datasource is used only during databinding, hence the DataItem is available only during Item Databound.
Hope this helps !