A scintillating display of contained aggression enabled Dinesh Kumar beat Bejenaru Constantin of Romania and enter the quarter-finals in the 81 kg category at the World Boxing Championships in Milan on Monday.
Dinesh started Round 1 confidently and scored the first point of the bout. He continued to attack even as the Romanian also got into the offensive. Round 1 ended with the score 3:2 in favour of Dinesh.
In Round 2, the bout was evenly matched for the first 30 seconds, but Dinesh, with his longer reach and crisper straight punches, pulled ahead convincingly to finish strongly with 11:4 points.
The Romanian tried to stage a comeback in the third round, but with supporters lustily cheering Dinesh, the Indian scored quick points to emerge a 19:7 winner.
In the quarter-finals he is up against Beterbiev Artur of Russia, who defeated Kamara Babacar of Sweden in the another pre-quarter-final earlier.
However, there was a setback for India as, in the 60 kg category pre-quarter-finals, Jai Bhagwan lost a close bout to Burhard Eugen of Germany.
The final 9:3 scoreline in favour of the German is, however, not indicative of how close the bout was.
Jai Bhagwan was down 2:5 at the end of the first round. He scored just one point in the next round, which ended 5:3 in the German's favour. Although Jai did try to attack his opponent in the final round, and the judges scored a lot of blows for him, there was not much power or clarity in the punches and the individual judges' scores did not get converted into accepted points.
The Indian corner of G S Sandhu and Jaidev Bisht seemed agitated at the points not getting scored for Jai but the truth is the blows by Jai Bhagwan needed more power and clarity to get the nod from the judges. These are some lessons Indian coaches and boxers will have to take home as they prepare for future international tournaments.
Meanwhile, Vijender's takes on Rolls Steve of Canada in the 75 kg category pre-quarter-finals on Tuesday.
