The Hindu : Indians begin with a bang

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 01, 2003

Sport

Sport - Boxing

Indians begin with a bang

By D. Ravi Shankar

Girish Pawar of India (left) lands a punch on Mudiyan Selage of Sri Lanka in the flyweight category in the first Goa International boxing championship at Colva Beach on Tuesday. — Photo: G.P. Sampath Kumar

COLVA (Goa) Sept. 30. Indian boxers began with a bang on the opening day of the Goa International championship here on Tuesday. Girish Pawar silver medallist at the 50th National Games set the winning trend with a hard fought victory over R. Mudiyan Selage of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka, however, had the distinction of being the first foreign country to win in this tournament when Manju Dinesh Kumar walloped Viswanath in the very first round of the bantam weight class.

Girish Pawar was kept on the defensive by Selage, who used his straight jabs effectively. Girish's hooks and uppercuts were deftly avoided by the Sri Lankan. In fact in the second round, Selage landed an explosive punch to Girish's head to have him reeling for the count of eight.

It was in the third and fourth rounds that Girish came back strongly. With his trademark punches landing, Selage was given the count of eight in the third round and despite the fourth round being a close one, the Indian won on unanimous points decision.

In the second bout of the day, Aswani Sharma repeatedly cornered Qatar's Naim Mohsen Awad and pounded him with telling straight jabs. The Qatari was also warned twice for holding and was squarely beaten 1-13.

Manju Dinesh Kumar came out aggressively to intimidate Goa's Viswanath from the word go. Manju in the very first minute had Viswanath tottering with a powerful right hook. After the mandatory count, Manju once again had the Indian boxer groggy with another thudding punch. The referee then had no hesitation in stopping the bout.

Goa's Pandarinath Shirodkar and Humayun Shamfgale of Afghanistan traded punches right through the four rounds with both boxers yielding no quarter. Pandarinath gained the verdict by a solitary point to give the host something to cheer about.

Goa's most famous boxer and the first boxing Arjuna Awardee Buddy D'Souza was felicitated prior to the last bout. Buddy, nicknamed the `kayo king' for the quick finishes to his bouts (he won 14 National titles), is one of Goa's most prominent sports personalities.

Lenin da Gama, Secretary of the Goa Boxing Association, reckoned that the tournament had made a small step forward and hoped that it would grow in stature. He vowed to make this international tournament an annual feature.

He also said that for this tournament, invitations had been sent out to England, Australia along with Botswana, Nigeria and South Africa and the three African nations had promised participation but had cancelled because of preparations for the Afro Asian Games in Hyderabad.

Present at the weighing in formalities were Gyorgy Kovacs, manager and Koivoly Balzsai, coach of the Hungary team of three boxers, Qatar's manager Ahmed Alzeyara and coach Hani Alshemari along with four pugilists, Sri Lanka's Cuban coach Jorge Luis Frometa Matos with his two boxers and Nepal's coach Om Maskey with his team of two boxers.

Other internationals in the fray who had yet to weigh in were, Afghanistan with six boxers, Bangladesh with five, Singapore (coach Balasundaram) with one and Philippines with six boxers.

India's squad was 31 with coach Sandhu and assistant J. Bisht.

There will also be a couple of exhibition bouts by women of the Tamil Nadu Boxing Association and Goa Boxing Association. Tamil Nadu's G. Praveen a sliver medallist at the Hyderabad National Games and G. Saraswathi, bronze medalist at the Delhi National Games, were pitted against Goa's women boxers.

Earlier the tournament was inaugurated by the Governor of Goa, Kedar Nath Sahani.

The results:

Fly: Girish Pawar (Ind Red) bt R. Mudiyan Selage (SL) points; Aswani Sharma (Ind Green) bt Naim Mohsen Awad 13-1.

Bantam: Vijendar Singh (Ind Red) bt R. Mustafa 22-13; Viswanath (Ind Green) lost to Manju Dinesh Kumar (SL) RSC/OC 1st round.

Feather: Pandarinath Shirodkar (Ind G) bt Humayun Shamfgale (Afg) 11-10.

60 kg: Jai Bhagwan Singh (Ind R) bt Santosh Birmole (Ind G) 15-8.

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