“Hit her, hit her hard,” shouted Afeida Khandokar, captain of the Bangladesh women’s football team, from the stands of the Mohammad Ali Boxing Stadium in Dhaka yesterday.

New York-based boxer Zinnat Ferdous expressed excitement over making her domestic debut in Bangladesh at the National Boxing Championships on Tuesday -- nearly two years after first representing the country at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games.

While Afeida shines brightly in the limelight, her elder sister Afra Khandokar has been quietly scripting her own story -- one that, until now, has largely remained out of the public eye.