Indian boxing has a new face: A wiry 21-year-old at his first world championship, bringing down some of the best fighters from around the world to ensure a bronze for India.
On Tuesday, in Belgrade, Akash Kumar added his name to the little list of seven Indian boxers who have previously won world championship medals. He beat 2016 Olympic silver-medallist Yoel Finol of Venezuela to move into the semis, guaranteeing himself a bronze.
On Thursday, Kumar lost at the semis, but remains the only member of India’s 13-man squad — many of them making their big-stage debuts — to win a medal at the world championship.
Kumar did it all while still trying to come to terms with a great tragedy that involved a difficult deception.
On October14, a day before the start of the senior national boxing championships, Narendra Rana, chief coach of the Armed Services boxing squad, received news that Kumar’s mother had died after a brief struggle with cancer. Kumar’s family had known for some time that Santosh Devi had only a few weeks to live, but on her insistence, this information was kept from Kumar, who was in training.
Now, the family could not decide whether to tell Kumar that she was gone. They told coach Rana that they were leaving it up to him. In his long career as a coach, Rana told Wknd, he has never faced a tougher decision. All day, he watched Kumar in training and suffered for the young man.
“It is the biggest tragedy in anyone’s life and I was constantly thinking about whether I was doing the right thing by not telling him. Was I doing grave injustice to a son? It was a battle between head and heart,” Rana says. “I thought if I told him that could be the end of his competition.”
It could have been the end of his career. The bantamweight (54kg) boxer was headed into a potentially career-defining championship. He was a clear contender for gold in his category, something that would earn him a place in the upcoming world championships.
What clinched it for Rana was the many times Kumar had told him how much his mother wanted him to come home with a medal. “I told our manager, we should not tell him. I will take this responsibility,” Rana says.
Rana put in place an elaborate plan to ensure that the news did not reach Kumar from elsewhere. He called a meeting of the coaching staff and told them everything. He called a meeting of the 13 boxers on the Armed Services team and asked them all to hand over their phones. Social media was proving too much of a distraction, they were told.
The next day, the first day of Kumar’s nationals fights, Rana was startled to see him talking on another phone. Kumar explained that the phone didn’t have an internet connection, so he’d kept it. Rana took it away.
Kumar was unstoppable at the nationals in Ballari, Karnataka. He won his maiden title. He was headed home with gold. He left for home, Paluwas village in Haryana, and still did not know the news.
A few hours later, Rana got a call from Kumar. “He was weeping,” Rana says. “But he told me that he would never forget what I had done for him by keeping this secret.” He had allowed Kumar the space to make his mother’s dream come true, and acted as she would have wanted him to for her son.
A few days later, Rana was appointed head coach of the Indian national team headed to the world championship. He was ringside when Kumar won on Tuesday.
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“I am feeling so proud,” Kumar said to Wknd, speaking over the phone from Belgrade after his quarter-final victory. “This was something my mother always wanted, to see me win medals for my country. My coach did me a great favour by not telling me then at the nationals. My mother too had told my family that I should not be disturbed.”
In the ring, Kumar is an aggressive and bold fighter who likes to stay on the attack. His introduction to boxing was almost fated. Kumar’s father was a local wrestler of repute but wanted both his sons to be boxers because boxers from the area, all trained in the nearby town of Bhiwani, were dominating at the national level at the time.
Kumar started training at the Captain Hawa Singh Boxing Academy in Bhiwani in 2008. Soon after, Vijender Singh, from Kumar’s neighbouring village Kaluwas, won India’s first Olympic medal in boxing. “I had just started,” Kumar says, “and the celebrations in Bhiwani were huge when the boxers came back. I was very inspired.”
A few months later, Kumar lost his father. The financial responsibility for Kumar and his brother Suraj fell to their uncle Bhanwar Singh, a chauffeur. “My brother had a dream to make them boxers and I wanted to fulfil that dream, even though it was difficult,” Singh says.
In 2014, Kumar was spotted by the Army Boys Sports Company, a joint programme run by the Indian Army and Sports Authority of India to train young boxers. This made it easier for him to stick with the sport despite his strained circumstances. This is also where Kumar first began to train under Rana.
“I always knew he was special,” Rana says. “A very aggressive and fearless boxer who, even as a boy, wanted to test himself against seniors.”
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