‘Best-ever’ wrestling haul is lightweight: Coach

Incidentally, this was the same tour — as reported in The Indian Express — on which the wife of a state official travelled as masseur and a judo expert as women’s coach. And the women’s team manager was a lady whom the secretary of the Wrestling Federation of India could not identify — in fact, she was one of five he couldn’t identify.

First, the good news: Indians won all seven categories in the men’s section, prompting Union Sports Minister Vikram Verma to praise their ‘‘commendable’’ performance. Two senior officials of the Sports Authority of India, executive director (teams) MP Ganesh and ED (operations) CR Gopinath claimed that their programmes ‘‘for the development of wrestling in the country have now bore fruit’’.

And Jagminder Singh, the chief coach of the men’s team in the championship, hailed it as ‘‘the best-ever Indian performance in Commonwealth championships’’.

Yet minutes later, pressed by this reporter, Singh admitted: ‘‘Competition was halka (lightweight)’’.

How halka?

Singh looked around before whispering: ‘‘Bahut hi halka.’’

His views were echoed by one of the participants, on condition of anonymity: the standard of competition was ‘‘worse than a local dangal held in any akhara anywhere in India.’’

That’s why none of the men’s categories had more than six participants; the 120-kg section, where Palwinder Cheema won gold, had only three entrants. And among the women, four entrants was the maximum, while Gurpreet Kaur couldn’t have done worse than a silver in the 72-kg event— there was only one other participant!

Though Jagminder said more than 14 countries took part, there were only six countries in the men’s competition and three in the women’s and none of them — Canada, Namibia, South Africa, New Zealand, England — was a traditional wrestling power.

‘‘There was no competition at all,’’ says former Indian coach and international referee Raj Singh. ‘‘Indian wrestlers are not going to gain anything taking part in competitions like this. Other countries send their third-rate teams to such competitions but our people have a different mindset.’’

The difference became clear a few days later, when the team took part in the Canada Cup alongside South Korea, Japan, the US and Puerto Rico. The two golds in the men’s section — the women drew a complete blank — carry far greater weight than the seven at the earlier meet.