Boxing: Meet Manju Bomboriya, the surprise package in India’s World Championship squad

There were very few surprises in the Indian squad for the upcoming Boxing World Championships given the performances in the last few months. Mary Kom got in by the sheer weight of her reputation. Sarita Devi is another veteran on the circuit. Assamese duo Lovlina Borgohain (69kg), Jamuna Boro (54kg) have been like a breath of fresh air in 2019.

Yet, 81kg pugilist Nandini, like four others in the roster, earned her first call-up for the marquee event.

But 64kg weight category was nowhere close to being an automatic pick. Pwilao Basumatary and Ankushita Boro are boxers of some pedigree in the youth circuit. But who would have thought Manju Bomboriya would pip them for a berth at the trials in New Delhi.

Not long ago, the Bhopal-based boxer nearly saw her fledgling career come to a screeching halt after a debilitating ACL injury. It looked like the show was over even before it could start.

“I really thought my career was over,” Bomboriya told Scroll.in about her injury she suffered in 2017. “I was so demotivated; down and out from what happened. I wondered if I could ever get back out there and be in the reckoning.”

That was when the Inspire Institute of Sport in Vijayanagar came to the youngster’s rescue. She still trains at the state-of-the-art-facility. “I trained hard and things got better gradually. But it was a slow process. Step by step, I began to get my confidence back.”

The ephemeral nature of an Indian boxer’s success is well documented. You blink and risk the prospect of the newest kid on the block taking your place.

Indian boxers have always been some of the most successful ones going around at the youth level, even if transitioning to the next level hasn’t yielded much success.

Defying odds

In 2017, Bomboriya was at the bottom of the pile but found a good mentor in American Ronald Simms, who works at JSW Sports.

“Something changed there. Since I was not feeling motivated, working with him [Simms] instantly changed things for me. After a long time, I’d experienced some kind of positivity. My strength and technique improved.”

The hard work of the last two years culminated in bulldozing her way into the Indian squad out of nowhere. “It was a fitting reply to all the people saying that I should quit my dream of becoming a boxer,” she said.

Defying odds, though, has come fairly easy for Bomboriya from her early years. It was not as if she hails from one of the boxing centres of India.

Despite receiving support from her parents, who just about made ends meet, there was a fair bit of resistance shown by the extended family. “I started out as a kabaddi player but gradually made strides in boxing as soon as I took it up.

“I didn’t receive a great deal of support in the beginning. But there was always this question of: ‘okay, go box, but what are you going to do with boxing?”

Bomboriya’s steady progress got the parents over on her side: “But after seeing my progress, they helped me out after that.”

She missed the whole of 2017 and 2018 with injury, the year that would serve as a dress rehearsal for World Championships at home. Despite not regaining full fitness, a bronze medal finish in the Nationals in 2019 saw her get back on track. Now, there was a gateway to the national camp and she was in the coaches’ vicinity.

Bomboriya’s final hurrah, though, was anything but smooth. She had lost to Basumatary and Boro before. It was down to who holds the nerves in a winner-takes-it-all bout.

“Honestly, there were doubts in mind. I had lost to them before,” Bomboriya recalls her trials in New Delhi. “But I won with a good score and I was very happy with the results.”

After narrow defeats against her two closest rivals in the 64kg category, Bomboriya comfortably emerged as the winner and booked a spot to Yekaterinburg, Russia. Next stop, a place in the Olympic squad but she would need to change her weight category for that. And Bomboriya would surely be up for the challenge.