The boxer from Madanpur Khadar

Gaurav Bidhuri is the latest male entrant to Indian boxing’s hall of fame. Only three others have won a medal at the world championships: Vijender Singh, 2009; Vikas Krishan, 2011; Shiva Thapa, 2015. All bronzes, yes, but that top drawer was entire-ly empty until 2009.

Bidhuri, though, is a surprise entrant there. He failed to qualify for the world championship and made to Hamburg in August this year on a wild card. Once there, though, he wore down Tunisia’s Bilel Mhamdi in the quarterfinals. He went on to lose in the semifinals, but came back with a bronze.

“I changed my weight (to 56 kg) and did my training hard. At the Asian Championships, I lost in the quarterfinals and then I lost in the playoffs. So, I couldn’t qualify. It was dis-appointing. But the wild card came out of nowhere. I thought maybe someone was joking,” says Bidhuri. Bhutan, it turned out, had declined the wild card.

There was a culture of boxing in Bidhuri’s family, with his father, Dharmendra, going up to the national level. On retirement, Bidhuri Sr opened a boxing club at his residence in Madanpur Khadar, a village in New Delhi, in 1991. His son was interested, to start with, and then obsessed.

“People called me lucky, and I was. How many people can train at home like I did? Now also, people called me lucky because I got the wild card. If I hadn’t won the medal, people would have said things. In previous competitions, I had lost in the quarterfinals. But thankfully everything fell into place. The second round was against a guy from Ukraine [Mykola Butsenko], a (2013) world championship bronze medallist, but I went on winning. Things have changed,” Bidhuri says.

Bidhuri’s success was India’s fourth medal at the worlds and the emergence of a new big-name Indian boxer. But it was more: it was a sign that Indian boxing was back to doing well.

For around three years leading up to late 2016, there was no proper federation governing the sport in the country. Why? The obvious: corruption and selfish games of one-upmanship. It got to a stage where the Indian team – as an ex-tension of the Indian federation – was barred from taking part in international meets. Indian boxers could still fight, but as independent boxers under the flag of AIBA, the international governing body.

Things finally changed with a new dispensation coming to power after the elections in September last year. Ajay Singh, the SpiceJet man, has taken charge as president of the Boxing Federation of India (new name too).

“If you have seen the results in the last three-four years, we were not doing good. We were not getting any exposure, our officials or referees were not getting a chance to go out. There were a lot of problems. So our performances went down. Now it’s doing so good. We are getting so much exposure. We have been winning medals.” Bidhuri’s bronze run might be the highlight, but before that India finished joint-third with Mongolia, behind Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, at the Asian Amateur Boxing Championships earlier this year.

“Both boys and girls – we are doing good. Earlier only one or two boxers got a chance at the big tournaments. Now more … even No. 3 No. 4 boxers at each weight category are getting a chance. That’s good for us too, because we have to train with them,” Bidhuri goes on. “We also have video analysts, and the coaching staff, new techniques ... everything is recorded, we have WhatsApp groups where we get videos, and then we analyse them. It’s just been just one year, but the difference is there.”

They also now have something to fight for, a focus point if you like.

“Three years is not a long time (to the 2020 Olympics). So many com-petitions, it will go just like that. Asian Games, Commonwealth Games … these will be my stepping stones. My morale is high after the medal. I will keep winning now. I want to use that for the Olympics,” Bidhuri gushes.

(Shamya Dasgupta is Senior Editor, Wisden India)