Before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the Indian athlete who had a vice-like grip over my imagination was Amit Panghal. It wasn’t just that he was the first boxer from India to go into an Olympics as the world No. 1 in his weight class. It wasn’t that he had won a rare gold for India in boxing at the 2018 Asian Games (the only other medal in boxing for India at this edition was a bronze), or that he had won a silver at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, or that he made the final of the 2019 World Boxing Championship to become the first Indian to win a silver at the worlds, though it did prove his remarkable consistency at the highest level, the kind that only someone like Mary Kom can boast of.
What it was, was the way he fought and the way he trained. In the ring, he had shades of Manny Pacquiao (boxing fans, I said “shades”)—in the frenetic speed with which he operated, the lightning combinations, the accuracy with which he landed, his smart, fast movement and the ability to change levels—to deliver a punch to the body and follow up with a shot to the head, or vice versa—that separates the great boxer from the merely good.
There were a couple of killer signature moves too. Panghal is compact for his weight class, which meant fighting from range, keeping an arm’s distance from the opponent—the jab—wasn’t always possible. He had to move inside his opponent’s range, ducking past a punch. He did that brilliantly too, using two combinations that inevitably got results. One was a quick jab with his leading hand at full standing height, and as the opponent got busy defending that, Panghal would stoop, take a stride forward, and loom up with an overhead punch with his other, hidden hand. The other was to duck under an hook, step to the side to change his angle and counter with a hook himself.
Then there were the training videos. Posted on his social media almost daily, they were eye-popping feats of strength and endurance, speed, agility, and power. During the lockdown in 2020, there was the added charm of watching him do all that outdoors, at his family’s farm in Haryana, often using farming implements instead of a boxing gym.
On the list of Indians who could win a gold at Tokyo, he was on top of my picks.
What followed was an inexplicable disaster. Panghal lost in the very first round. It wasn’t even a close fight. He got hammered. He could hardly move, or land punches himself. He spent the last round in desperation, doing something I’ve never seen him do before, running around the ring trying to avoid getting hit while looking for some way to counter his opponent.
A dejected Panghal returned to India to find that the boxing federation, aghast at his performance, had washed their hands of him. He was no more a part of the national squad. There was no one to console or counsel him, no one to analyze his Tokyo experience, give him confidence, or help him find a way forward. Instead, there was silence. He withdrew to his village. He thought of giving up on his sport.
Good sense prevailed and he slowly made his return, though he has stayed under the radar in the lead up to Birmingham. Now he finds himself ready for redemption, as he takes on Scotland’s Lennon Mulligan in the Flyweight quarters. A win here would guarantee at least a bronze. What Panghal needs is gold.
The Indian boxing contingent has been growing into one of the CWG’s strongest teams over the years. The Games offer a fairly high standard of boxing, with the presence of nations who have great fighting pedigree, like England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Canada, South Africa and Nigeria. Results at the CWG have been good predictors of India’s rise in the sport too—a solitary medal from Akhil Kumar in 2006 signalled a change in Indian boxing that led to Vijender Singh winning the country’s first Olympic medal in the sport two years later. That momentum, and home advantage, led to an unprecedented haul of medals at the 2010 CWG in New Delhi, with three gold medals and four bronze medals (including Vijender). The 2014 edition saw women’s boxing make its debut at CWG, and India won a silver and a bronze there, while the men’s team slipped with three silver medals. At the 2018 Gold Coast Games, India registered their finest boxing performance with three gold medals, three each of gold, silver and bronze.
This time, there is the promise that even that haul will be exceeded, with most of India’s boxers—including Panghal, Shiva Thapa, Ashish Kumar, Mohammed Hussamuddin, world champion Nikhat Zareen, Tokyo medallist Lovlina Borgohain and the very exciting debutant Nitu—all in fine form.
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