She was tiny, almost. The red shorts went down well past her knees, and the sleeveless red tee, tucked in, seemed like it had been borrowed from a giant, the armhole hanging close to her midsection. She looked excited. Swinging away at an invisible opponent, her gloves as oversized as everything else on her. You couldn’t even see much of her face behind the head guard — just a few tufts of hair sticking out here and there. MC Mary Kom was already a world champion. She had won gold in Antalya, Turkey in the 45-kg class in 2002. This was 2003. Hisar, Haryana. The Asian Boxing Championships. How, one wondered. Can she really punch to hurt?

Sure, the opponents were of the same weight category, but all of them, somehow, looked bigger than Mary. The clothes fit them better, as did the head guards and gloves. But none of them were half as good as her. She went for them from the call, no stepping back, just swinging away, relentlessly. If the punches didn’t carry enough weight on their own, she made sure there were enough of them to keep adding up, wearing the other women down.

She won gold, needless to say. It would become a habit over the next few years. Her weight went up to 48, and she took it up to just under 51 to be able to take part in the 2012 London Olympics. It was the first time women’s boxing was included in the Games, but in just three weight classes — 51 the lowest. Mary, fighting in that unfamiliar category, managed to win the bronze. Through these many years of boxing, she got married, took a break, birthed twin boys, a break, another son, another break, and just when one thought Queen Mary had finished up and settled into a celebrity lifestyle amid visits to the Rajya Sabha, bang! Gold in the 2017 Asian Championships. At 34. There were other Indian wins too: one silver, Sonia Lather (57 kg), and five bronzes — Shiksha (54), Priyanka Chaudhary (60), L Sarita Devi (64), Lovlina Borgohain (69) and Seema Punia (81+).

***

A decade and a half on from her first World Championship gold medal, Mary is still the best India has. It’s a testament to her skill, drive, ability and hunger — if you speak to her, you realise that little else matters to her apart from boxing, family and religion the only competition. But the obsession and passion are geared for one thing alone: her craft.

That, in all these years, India hasn’t been able to find the next Mary, is a failure of the system. The only one to make a splash with some degree of consistency has been L Sarita Devi. Sarita is also 35, no spring chicken. In terms of sheer potential, Sarjubala Devi, still only 24, remains the ‘next big thing’ but her growth, as she admits herself, hasn’t gone to plan.

Mary, soon after her latest triumph, says, “If I am fit and training properly, no one can beat me in 48 kg.” She is talking about the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, when she will be 36-37. There’s no reason to doubt her. She has probably been the greatest amateur women’s boxer ever. We can talk about age and much else, but if she says she can, we have to believe she can.

The question is: will there be a 48-kg class at all in Tokyo? Talk is that the number of categories will be increased to five. What will those categories be? Will Mary have to go back to 51?

“We will fight as hard as we can,” says Ajay Singh, the SpiceJet owner who took over as Boxing Federation of India (BFI) chief last year. “There are issues in AIBA (International Boxing Association)… things are unsettled (financial mismanagement, infighting, and so on). We will fight to have 48 kg. It’s very important for us.”

This not only underscores the importance of having Mary fighting in her favoured category — “If 48 is there in Tokyo, I can say I will win… if I have to shift my category, I will have to train differently again” — but, again, the lack of serious hopefuls among the others.

***

Having said that, in Indian boxing, things appear to be far better than they have been in the past three years or so, when infighting and politicking led to the Indian federation being blacklisted by AIBA. Finally, after much toing-and-froing, the 2016 elections were given the thumbs up, and Singh took charge of the renamed federation. In India, however, where politics and power games go hand in hand with sports administration, that wasn’t the end of things, even though each and every boxer one speaks to talks well of the current set-up. The ousted boxing — and Indian Olympic sport — boss, Abhay Chautala, remains close to N Ramachandran, president of the Indian Olympic Association, and that league isn’t happy that Singh has taken their fiefdom away. Games of one-upmanship and petty points scoring have been on.

Within the BFI, too, there are grumblings. A senior official, declining to be identified, says, “We have gone from the devil to the deep sea. Some of us, who have served Indian boxing for years, are part of the federation, but we have no powers at all. It’s become a one-man show. The president has his hand-picked people everywhere and all the decisions are taken by them. Even the secretary — Jay Kowli — has no power. If things go well, good, but I don’t know how many of us will vote for Mr Singh if it comes to a direct face-off with Mr Chautala, or one of his representatives.”

There — things might spiral out of sync again. The more things change and all that, of course. Thinking positively (not always easy in Indian sports administration), one hopes an upturn in the immediate future will help keep the peace.

***

Nothing succeeds like success, to use a cliché. Since the new administration took over, results have been decent. India finished third — behind Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan — in the men’s Asian Amateur Championships earlier this year and, among other highlights, there was Gaurav Bidhuri winning bronze in the 56-kg category at the World Championships, only the fourth Indian to do so. Then the good run, headlined by Mary and Lather, and, most recently, five gold and two bronze at the World Women’s Youth Championships held in Guwahati — India’s best performance at the tournament ever.

“There have been lots of changes in our boxing after the new president came,” says Lather, the 26-year-old Haryanvi who was the only Indian to win a medal — the 57-kg silver — in the 2016 World Championships as well. “Earlier, no one asked us what we wanted. It was very bureaucratic. They had the right intentions — they would come, take notes, but nothing happened. Nowadays, we just have to say something and within five days it gets done. We needed some new gym equipment recently, Ajay sir was there and we told him, and next day everything was there. He comes and talks to all of us individually, not only the seniors. It’s much nicer now.”

At the same time, there was the recent setback of Stephane Cottalorda, the French coach of the senior bunch, resigning within a month of taking charge. He said the BFI hadn’t honoured its financial and some other commitments. The BFI put it down to procedural delays, which Cottalorda didn’t buy. “He couldn’t really adjust,” Singh says.

How much did it affect the Indian women boxers? Not much, you’d think, because Cottalorda left so soon, and the boxers did all right at the Asian Championships after that. But for a bunch of talented athletes, in a sport where India was on its way to becoming a force to reckon with — among the men and the women — before being let down so badly, a solid structure and stability is the crying need of the hour.

Mary stresses that the Singh-led body has been doing its job well, and the improved circumstances are there to see. Both the men and the women have been divided into Elite (senior), Youth (under-19) and Junior (under-17) groups, and the plan is to have full-fledged coaching and other staff in place for all of them.

Santiago Nieva, the Argentine-origin Swedish coach of the senior men’s team, is one of the people who have stayed on. Bidhuri calls him “innovative” and Vikas Krishan, a former World Championship bronze medallist, lauds his “patience”. Overseeing the progress of the senior women boxers, too, since Cottalorda left, Nieva has good things to say about the younger lot of boxers. He says emphatically, “One or two years from now, we will be very equipped to fight with the best nations in the world. Two-and-a-half years from now, we should be very good.”

When it comes to women’s boxing, money isn’t an issue, says Singh, whose body also revived the national championships after a gap. “We wanted to get started quickly, identify boxers, put them in national camps and train them. I shifted the camp to Delhi so I could oversee it personally. The potential among our women boxers is tremendous,” he says.

That’s not all, if he is to be believed: “We are trying to set up the world’s best boxing academy in Delhi and seven to eight satellite academies, one in the North-East, where boxing is strong, where women’s boxing is strong. We want to identify the best boxers, get them to compete in the nationals, not restrict anything to the one or two best boxers.

“Instead of the pre-tournament camps, we are trying to ensure year-round programmes. In between, they go for international championships, get foreign exposure. Also, we are getting younger coaches involved; coaches who can also spar with the players and not just train them from the outside. We will hire someone to replace Stephane soon, before the Commonwealth Games (April 2018 in Gold Coast). We are hiring nutritionists, physios, the works…”

And Mary, it seems, is playing a bigger role than she would as just another senior boxer. She is a mentor to the youngsters. “She is the greatest motivation, everyone must look up to her,” Vijender Singh, India’s first Olympic and World Championship medallist among men, says of Mary, and Singh concurs. “They (young girls) get into boxing to become Mary Kom. Who better to guide them? She is a huge role model. Her presence is fantastic.”

As for Mary, she has taken her role seriously enough too. A slick new video on the BFI website promoting the Indian team ahead of the Youth World Championships, held in Guwahati last week, had the youngsters rubbing shoulders with Mary, and she says of them, “Some of the older boxers are not very smart, they fight the old way; the youngsters are smarter. They lack experience, but the talent is very much there. We have to put pressure on the youngsters to improve.”

“These girls have impressed me a lot with their spirit and attitude of not giving up,” says Raffaele Bergamasco, the Italian who recently became the first overseas coach of the junior women boxers. “In my country (Italy), there are systems and structures in place but these girls have the desire and grit and that sets them apart.

“I don’t like to predict the number of medals, but over the next few years India will have a lot of good boxers; each of the boxers has been working on her intensity. I insist so much on the tactical and technical aspect of the girls, given the age and little competition experience... they have improved a lot and will continue to improve.”

Bergamasco goes on to talk about the one thing that he feels will make the Indian girls stand out from their global compatriots — the heart with which they train and fight. “What attracts me the most is that they are real people and they respect the smaller things, something the West is losing,” he says. Amazingly, Bergamasco has this conversation with me after taking the questions and running them through a translator app. That’s how he communicates to the boxers, too, with “no problems”, but he is starting to pick up Hindi, which should help. A good number of Indian instructors, including Gurbaksh Singh Sandhu, who was the men’s national team coach for years, are working with the foreigners, learning the ways of the fast-changing world along with the fighters.

***

On the face of it, things look in decent — not great, but better than before — shape. Singh seems to be driven, hungry to make a success of his latest ‘venture’. The boxers, including Mary, look happy. But then again, they are not known to speak against the bosses, whoever they are, as long as they are a part of the system. Mary got as good as she did ahead of the 2012 Olympics chiefly because she opted out of the national set-up and went to Pune to train with Charles Atkinson, hired for her by Olympic Gold Quest, a not-for-profit set up by former Olympian sportspersons. She wasn’t happy with the training she was getting and the private body stepped in to make sure she got ready as best as she could in good time. If Mary spoke out against the federation in 2012, I don’t remember it. Such is the system that, bar a few exceptions like Abhinav Bindra, athletes don’t want to risk their bread and butter. Why rock the boat when it could mean victimisation and, perhaps, even ostracism?

So, are things as good as our boxers say they are? Perhaps. There certainly seems to be a degree of professionalism and even corporate ethic in place that wasn’t there before.

“We need to be a boxing superpower in the world — among men and women,” Singh says over and over, and you want to believe him, that he means it and will do what is needed to make it a reality.

That’s a strong mission statement. To get there, the next generation, led by the likes of Lather and Sarjubala, needs to be brought up to speed: world-class coaches, the best training and, crucially, a healthy ecosystem, and peace in the boardroom. If that happens, India might have the next Mary, the next world-beater. Maybe even a few of them. The talent is certainly there, and the heart to go with it.

Shamya Dasguptais Senior Editor, Wisden India

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