Abahani, MSC in boxing?

The newly elected committee of the Bangladesh Amateur Boxing Federation (BABF) is planning to introduce the Club Cup Boxing tournament in a latter part of this year, with the participation of the country's traditional sporting clubs such as Abahani, Mohammedan, Victoria and Dhaka Wanderers.

These clubs are well known in the sports arena, especially in football, cricket and hockey, but have never taken part in any boxing event organised by the BABF, which usually holds men's and women's national boxing championships and junior boxing championships where districts, service teams and club teams take part. 

The game's governing body also holds the Victory Day and Independence Day boxing competitions every year.

“We have discussed about introducing the Club Cup tournament with clubs such as Abahani, Mohammedan, Victoria SC, Dhaka Wanderers and others apart from the existing top boxing clubs,” said the BABF's new general secretary Mazharul Islam Tuhin after emerging from the first meeting of the newly elected executive committee yesterday.

“I have been in sports for a long time and I am closely involved with football and cricket, so I have a good relationship with club officials. I want to utilise my personal relationship and I believe I can convince fifty percent of those clubs,” explained Tuhin, who is also the general secretary of Victoria SC, adding that the tournament will be named after Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Tuhin informed that he would start communicating with the club officials within a few days while he would try to use his personal relationship to rope in sponsors to hold the tournament in November-December.

“If we can't introduce the Club Cup, we will try to introduce a tournament for young boxers. I am confident that we will be able to do one of those two events because we want to take boxing forward,” said the organiser, who is also the general secretary of Dhaka Metropolis First Division Football League.

The newly-elected general secretary is also planning to rope in a foreign coach for the national boxing team and arrange a coaches' course to upgrade local coaches.

The meeting also formed a three-member probe committee to look into the fiasco of the Commonwealth Games where two Bangladeshi boxers could not participate due to the negligence of coach-cum-manager Abdul Mannan, who reportedly was absent during a technical committee meeting.