Punjab: Boxers showed their strength, got a boxing ring as reward

Punjab: The holy city of Amritsar finally got a boxing ring 44 years after the sport was introduced. In view of the consistent performance of Amritsar’s boxing team, the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) has bestowed the district with a boxing ring as per international standards. In the last 20 years, a local boxing centre has produced over 300 national and seven international players. Baljinder Singh, who started coaching young boxers in 1999, was appointed coach by the then Punjab Sports Director Pargat Singh in 2004-2005. Baljinder, who is employed as an Assistant Sub Inspector (ASI) in Punjab Police, gives free training to the youth. Late Karam Singh of Sangrur was the boxing coach of the Punjab Sports Department and played a key role in introducing boxing in the city in 1981. Subsequently, Anil Sharma of the Sports Authority of India, besides Balkar Singh and GS Bhalla trained the young boxers. Baljinder Singh was instrumental in starting boxing at Khalsa College in 2005-06. In the last 18 years, the college team has been champions in inter-college competitions for 14 years and finished second for two years. The competition could not be held for two years due to Covid.

Baljinder, a former national-level boxer, started training students when the sport was looked upon with suspicion for “training” youngsters for brawls and street fights, an image created by Bollywood films that were full of such instances in the 2000 biopic. Hence, middle-class families used to avoid sending their children to get boxing training at Baljinder’s centre. Currently, MTech and MBBS students are training under Baljinder while many others are pursuing master’s degrees. Baljinder said, “My aim is to make the students disciplined, boxing comes next. If a person is disciplined, he is bound to move ahead in life. The centre is training around 80 boys and 20 girls.” The players trained by him have been earning accolades by securing positions in state and national level championships and receiving boxing rings from the BFI as prizes. Over the years, around 130 boxers from the centre have secured jobs in various state and central government departments and five have become Class 1 officers. After all, every boxer with a middle-class background aspires to have a permanent job. Two players from Punjab, Snehdeep Singh (55kg) and Vansh Sharma (75kg), were included in the 13-member Indian squad for the 2024 Youth World Cup to be held in Europe. In 2022, Asmeen Kaur, a class VIII student of Chauhan village, won a bronze medal in the sub-junior (52-54 kg) Punjab State Boxing Championship. The boxing team of Khalsa College Senior School created history by emerging champions for 24 consecutive years in the District School Boxing Tournament. Out of the 54 medals won by Amritsar in the All India Inter-University Competition, 49 medals including 12 gold medals were won by the centre. Sukhraj Singh of the centre was declared champion in the 2011 All India Inter-University Competition. He is now employed in the Punjab Police. Rajpinder Singh, employed in the Railways, has won three gold medals in the inter-university competition. Daljeet Kaur, another trainee of the centre, had won five medals including two gold and three bronze medals in the inter-university competition. She had also won two silver and one bronze medal in the Senior Women’s National Boxing Championship. Talking about his goal as a boxing coach, Baljinder Singh said, “Till date, only three boxers from Punjab have represented India in the Olympics. I hope that one of our players will be ready to represent Punjab in boxing by the year 2028.”