No home advantage for Indian boxers in C`wealth C`ship

New Delhi: Reasons ranging from security to maintenance are robbing Indian boxers of the home advantage

ahead of the Commonwealth Championships as they have been forced to change their practice venue after Talkatora Stadium became out of bounds for them on Tuesday. After getting a feel of the Talkatora arena for the first time yesterday during a two-hour training session, the boxers were forced to head for the much smaller training ring of the Railway Stadium as their practice session at the Championship venue was cancelled at the 11th hour. "We are hosting the Championship. Like other host nations we should have got the access to the venue early but after yesterday, we are back at the same old facilities.” "I don`t think we have the home ground advantage, we might just have the home crowd advantage," quipped 2005 Commonwealth Championship and 2006 Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Akhil Kumar (56kg). "It`s always better to get a feel of the venue and we trained there for a couple of hours yesterday but then as experienced professionals we will have to deal with it. We are in Delhi, I guess that`s good enough," added Olympic and World Championship bronze medallist Vijender Singh (75kg). The boxers, who were training in Patiala until last week, had repeatedly requested for early access to the venue ahead of the Championship to acclimatise to the conditions. Their plea was finally accepted on Sunday and they landed in the capital to practice at Talkatora, having a more than a two-hour-long session yesterday. But citing last-minute maintenance and heightened security, the stadium was locked out for the participating teams today. The boxers from Scotland and England were also scheduled to practice at Talkatora in the early half of the day but they were also forced to stay at their hotels after the abrupt change of plans. "When security is given as a reason, we can`t really argue much but yesterday`s session was excellent. The facilities were really good and it would have been nice to continue practicing there but then we can`t really do much when security is given as a reason to keep the venue out of bounds," said national coach Gurbax Singh Sandhu. The organisers didn`t have much of an explanation to offer for the change of plans and Indian Boxing Federation Secretary General P K Muralidharan Raja said,"The security has been tightened and there is some last-minute sprucing up to do. So they have shut out everyone." At the Railway stadium, the boxers slogged it out for nearly two hours in a hall which was just not big enough to accommodate 45 campers. So, while a few sparred inside the ring, the others restricted themselves to running and other casual exercises outside. The Talkatora stadium, with a capacity of 2700 is also the main venue for the Commonwealth Games` boxing competition scheduled from October 3 to 14 this year. PTI