Calcutta: The television ratings haven’t been announced as yet, but it’s assumed that millions watched apna munda Vijender Kumar face Cuba’s Emilio Correa Bayeaux in the middleweight semi-finals on Friday afternoon.
There was a time when Olympics meant tuning in to the legendary Jasdev Singh’s exhilarating hockey commentary on the radio.
The Jasdev effect would be such that, often, one was left breathless.
Television, though, brought about a change and the track and field events scored real big on the wow-factor.
We did regain gold in Moscow (1980), but the decline of men’s hockey in India more or less coincided with access to live television coverage of the Olympics.
Today, it’s at such a low that we didn’t even qualify for Beijing, causing emotional distress across the country.
Of course, Leander Paes’ bronze-winning effort in Atlanta, a dozen years ago, had us hooked on to tennis in that edition. Later, we won medals in weightlifting (Sydney, 2000) and shooting (Athens, 2004), but neither is a viewer-friendly sport.
Boxing is, but nobody had quite made a mark till the Kumar trio — Akhil, Jitender and Vijender — punched their way into the quarter finals in Beijing.
With Abhinav ‘Mr Serene’ Bindra proving that absolutely nothing was impossible, the progress of any Indian in any discipline began to be followed with the passion usually reserved for Team India.
That the Anil Kumbles flopped in the Test series in Sri Lanka and Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Co. lost the first ODI (it’s 1-1 now) made it easier to switch loyalties, so to say.
Akhil and Jitender couldn’t get a medal, but once Vijender was assured of a bronze, at least, DD Sports was assured of probably its highest viewership outside a cricket match featuring the Men in Blue.
Having already created history, Vijender (who could give established Bollywood heroes a run for their millions) had nothing to lose and didn’t go down without a fight.
Experts feel Vijender came up somewhat short technically, but it’s a fact that he was up against a higher-ranked opponent whose father had been an Olympic champion, in Munich (1972).
Pedigree, perhaps, then did play a part. Surely, destiny too.
Vijender, however, won two of the four rounds — the second (3-2) and the last (2-1). The Cuban took the first (2-0) and the third (3-0), which turned out to be decisive.
Usually, cricket is the flavour of the season and, so, one jumped and exclaimed “good shot” instead of “good punch” when Vijender did get going.
But so what?
Gurbux Singh, a member of the gold medal-winning hockey team in 1964 (Tokyo) and the bronze-winning one in 1968 (Mexico City), summed things up rather nicely.
“Setting aside business, I’d been waiting for 12.46 pm (the bout started a little late, though)… A silver or gold would have been so much better, but the gutsy Vijender fought very well and is bound to inspire a generation or more of boxers,” the city-based Olympian told The Telegraph.
The day could have been sweeter, yes, but we should still be raising a toast to the 22-year-old from a village not far from Haryana’s Bhiwani.
