Shiva, Manoj advance to quarterfinals

FOURTH SEED Shiva Thapa (60kg) and sixth seed Manoj Kumar (69kg) led the charge as five Indian boxers entered the Asian Championship quarterfinals on an all-win day for the country here.

Shiva, a World Championships bronzemedallist and a two-time medallist at the Asian meet, edged past Kyrgyzstan's Omurbek Malabekov in a split verdict to make the last-eight stage.

Shiva will face Chinese Taipei's Chu-en Lai in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.

Manoj fought it out against Afghanistan's Allah Dad Rahimi and emerged triumphant without much of a hassle. Awaiting the former Commonwealth Games gold-medallist in the quarterfinals is Mongolia's Tuvshinbat Byamba. Also advancing to the quarters were Sumit Sangwan (91kg), a former gold-medallist at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers, and Manish Panwar (81kg) and Kavinder Singh Bisht (49kg). Sumit defeated Mongolia's Erdenebayar Sandagsuren in his last-16 bout late last night. Up ahead for the Haryanapugilist is third-seeded Chinese Fengkai Yu.

Manish, on the other hand, defeated Sri Lanka's GR Gunarathna in his prequarterfinal bout. Manish's win was a unanimous verdict. In the evening session, Kavinder took on Indonesia's Aldoms Suguro and prevailed comfortably in a unanimous verdict. Kavinder, a National Championships quarterfinalist, will be squaring off against local favourite Jasurbek Latipov in the quarterfinals.

Earlier, in the morning session, Shiva managed to get the better of Omurbek by landing most of the few clean punches in the bout. Both the boxers played the waiting game for a major part of the contest but the former Asian champion from India was a shade ahead of his rival in capitalising on the opportunities he got.

Omurbek, despite his long reach, struggled to connect cleanly and even ended up sustaining a cut above his left eye. Manoj's but was devoid of any drama and the Indian went about dismantling his lesser-fancied rival with utmost ease. Rahimi's attacks lacked both creativity and power and Manoj had no trouble emerging as the clear winner.

Vikas Krishan (75kg), Gaurav Bidhuri (56kg) and Amit Phangal (49kg) are the other Indian boxers to have entered the quarters so far. Satish Kumar (+91kg) is already through to the quarters after getting an opening-round bye. The tournament, featuring 179 boxers from 28 countries, is a qualifier for the August-september World Championships in Hamburg, Germany.

The top-six in each of the 10 weight categories in this tournament will make the cut for the marquee event. India had won four medals at the last Asian Championships in 2015. Vikas had won the country its lone silver medal, while Shiva, L Devendro Singh (52kg) and Satish (+91kg) had settled for bronze medals. India's last gold medal at the Asian meet had come in 2013 through Shiva, when he was competing in the bantamweight division.