Dingko disappoints

Dingko came here as a major hope to make the grade after missing the Asian meet in Tashkent owing to a right wrist injury, but put up a pathetic performance.

The usually agile boxer could neither throw his sharp punches nor move out of his opponent’s blows and seemed to lack stamina. The Indian led by two points after thefirst two rounds, but Tsuji Moto reorganised himself and delivered effective combination punches to clinch the bout. It was apparent he had not trained well for this event.

None of the other six Indian boxers in the fray were in action on a miserably cold opening day, which saw heavy snowing and temperature dip to minus six degrees outside the indoor arena.

Lightfly Suresh Singh has been given a bye into the second round against a Kuwaiti rival. Flyweight H Srinivasa Rao will begin his campaign tomorrow. Lightweight pugilist Narender Rana will face an Iranian rival in the first round.

Commonwealth Games silver medallist Jitender Kumar and lightheavy Gurcharan Singh have both been drawn directly into the quarter-final round.(PTI)