It takes some patience to be a counter-puncher. To weave a trap and wait for your chance, for your moment to make the move and surge ahead. Vikas Krishan has taken a few knocks in the ring. But the Indian counter-punching boxer believes his time will come.

“Kab tak taqdeer saath nahi degi (how long will fate work against me)?" the 23-year-old says on the phone in his Haryanvi accent. “I will keep working hard, and working smart till then."

Having taken over from Vijender Singh, who recently turned pro, as India’s leading Olympic contender for the middleweight (75kg) category, Krishan is now a step away from making it to the 2016 Rio Games. He returned home with India’s lone silver medal at the recently concluded 2015 ASBC Asian Confederation Boxing Championships in Bangkok, Thailand. Krishan lost to Uzbekistan’s Bektemir Melikuziev in the final bout. He has to finish in the top three at the World Boxing Championships, which will be held in Doha, Qatar, from 5-15 October, to make the cut for the Olympics. He will be leading an Indian contingent of six boxers, including the three bronze medallists from the Asian championships, Devendro Singh Laishram, Satish Kumar and Shiva Thapa.

Ask him about his chances of making the cut for Rio, having gone up a weight category (from 69kg to 75kg), and Krishan leaves no room for doubt. “I am 100% sure I will be there at Rio," he says with a bravado typical of his sport.

He had admitted, after returning from the Asian championships, that his overconfidence had cost him in the finals.

“I was not there for the silver, I wanted a gold," Krishan had said during a media interaction in New Delhi. “No doubt it was the toughest bout of my career but I should have won it. When I got to know that Melikuziev is just 19, I thought I would kill him and that made me overconfident."

Having been burnt once, and given the quality of competition ahead, complacency is unlikely to seep in when he enters the ring in Doha. “There are some very good boxers, especially from Europe, in the worlds," says the Indian.

To acquaint himself somewhat with the international territory, Krishan trained with Great Britain’s boxing team in Sheffield for a fortnight, in July. Since Aiba, or the International Boxing Association, derecognized the Indian Boxing Federation in 2012, Indian boxing has been in rough waters, strapped of funds.

“Earlier, we used to have two-three trips abroad in a year," says Krishan, whose stint with the British boxing team was sponsored by Jindal Steel Works. He is one of the athletes of the company’s corporate social responsibility initiative Sports Excellence Programme.

“But now, because of the problem with the federation, it is barely one per year. The training itself is not too different. They definitely have better facilities and more focus on nutrition. But so many years in this sport, no one is going to teach you a new technique to punch," says Krishan.

Krishan is not just the heir apparent of India’s most accomplished boxer, he is also one of the very few seen as a medal contender at the Rio Olympics. He is also one of the few who seems to have kept himself afloat at a time when the long and bitter feud in the country’s boxing administration has threatened to drown the sport.

It is a sad story of utter neglect of a sport in the face of politics, entirely emblematic of how most sports in India are run. The Indian federation, banned after revelations of rigged elections, has never recovered. Continued in-fighting among the stakeholders has meant that Indian boxing continues without a governing body. This has taken a toll: Among other things, there have not been any training trips abroad for Indian boxers, they haven’t been able to compete in international tournaments under the Indian flag, and there have been no national championships—a disaster in a pre-Olympic year.

“We need these (foreign) trips mainly to measure ourselves up against different kinds of boxers," Krishan explains. “You can’t grow if you keep on sparring with the same people every day."

The benchmark for his weight division in India is high. It was a category made famous by Vijender Singh when he became the first, and till now the only, Indian boxer to win an Olympic medal, getting a bronze at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

This seemed to have heightened the country’s interest in boxing.

Today, however, the sport doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and Krishan is only too aware of this.

“Will many Indian boxers qualify for the Olympics through the world championships? I don’t think so," he says. “We are in a bad situation. How can anyone expect us to do well with no proper plan or backing? Yet we are giving it all we have."

For Krishan, the Olympic stage has already brought a slice of misfortune. At the 2012 London Games, after his bout with Errol Spence of the US in the pre-quarters of the 69kg category, Krishan was declared the winner by a 13-11 scoreline. An Aiba panel later ruled in his opponent’s favour, 13-15. It was a blow that threatened to knock him down. Wiser now, Krishan is determined not to let it define him.

“How long will I keep thinking of that?" he asks. “What has happened is in the past, I don’t like to think about it either way. It is not an added motivation for me. I am motivated about boxing for myself, my name, and not to prove anything to anyone."

After the Olympic ordeal, Krishan says he needed some time out from boxing. He kept away from the ring for more than a year, and shifted his focus to police training (he is a deputy superintendent of police in Haryana).

“It was more mental work, trying to solve cases, than physical," he recalls. “I enjoyed it a lot for the first six months. Then for the next six months, I hated it!" Why? “It gets boring. You start to get bored of the routine, of the daily schedule. It’s a long time to be doing the same thing. So after a year, when I started missing boxing, I returned to the ring."

But returning to the sport was not enough. He needed a bigger challenge. Having made a name for himself in the welterweight (69kg), Krishan moved up a category to 75kg.

“It was my personal decision to make the change," he says. “Of course I did take advice from my coach but I was tired of sparring against the same boxers. I wanted to do something new. Besides which, I never really enjoyed trying to keep my weight down for competition."

While his competition weight was around 67kg when he contested in the welterweight, Krishan says he is now keeping steady at 73kg. At 5ft, 10 inches, he is not at a big disadvantage in terms of height or reach either. “I don’t think the transition was too difficult," he elaborates. “I had to work on strength and power." The higher the weight category, the heavier the punches.

But nothing seems to faze the Bhiwani boxer. Neither his seasoned opponents nor the rule changes introduced by Aiba in 2013—no headgear for amateurs, for instance. “If it hurts, it hurts everyone, not just me," says Krishan.

The Indian laid all doubts to rest when he won the bronze medal in the 75kg category at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. Now, with a world challenge looming, the guard is up again.

“I haven’t compromised on the hard work," he says, looking forward to the Doha tournament. “And most of the time, going into a bout, or even a round, I know what my chances of winning are. But then you have to see whose day it is: his or mine."

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