National boxing from today

Services pugilists will be looking to put the record straight against Railways, who scraped past the former in the last edition to win the overall championship. Both the teams logged 50 points each, but Railways Sports Control Board (RSCB) were declared champions on the strength of the number of golds they had won. Ralways won five golds while Services bagged one short.

Ramanand (featherweight) and S Suresh Singh (lightfly) will be the two pugilists to be watched. Fresh from the 6th YMCA international boxing championship, held in New Delhi, where they won gold in their respective categories, Ramanand and Suresh are slowly but surely gaining international accolade. Suresh Singh caused a major upset defeating the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games gold winner Sapok Biki of Malaysia.

Employed with CISF he is being trained by L Ibomocha Singh, the person responsible for unearthing Dingko Singh.

The exploits of Hayat Singh and Durjay Shastri will also be watched. Hayat Singh (Services) won a gold in the Manipur National Games pipping Durjay. But the latter exacted revenge beating Hayat in the YMCA championship.

Srinivasa Rao (lightfly), Durga Prasad (fly), K Balaramulu (bantam), P Srikanth (light welter) and M Satish Kumar (light heavy) will add local flavour. Of them Srinivasa Rao bagged a gold in the National Games. Rest of them had to be content with bronze in their respective categories.

Col Padmakaran, coach of Services, was confident his boys will put up a good performance. Birju Singh (fly weight), Dingko Singh (bantam), Narender Rana (light), Gurcharan Singh (light heavy) and AC Vijayan (heavy) were among the gold medal winners in the last edition. But this time round they may face stiff challenge from All-India Police Board, who are making their debut along with Sikkim and Tripura.

National coach GS Sandhu predicted that in the next couple of years Police pugilists will be a force to reckon with. Time only will tell how true he is.