Nine Indians, including National Champion A L Lakra who knocked out South African Ashley Giannini, have made it to the semi-finals of the Commonwealth Boxing championship at Glasgow, Scotland.
Lakra, competing in the featherweight category, came up with an amazing performance to knock out his higher ranked opponent in just second of the four-round bout, according to information received in New Delhi on Thursday.
Olympian Akhil Kumar defeated Barbados pugilist Bradley on points 31-12 in the quarterfinal of the bantam weight category while Som Bahadur Pun, silver medallist in last edition, won a close bout against Germot Hamill of North Ireland 11-8 to advance to the semis in light welter category.
In the welterweight, Olympian Vijendar fought a nail-biting quarterfinal against Johnson of Bahamas and was lucky to edge past him by a narrow margin of 12-11.
National champion Parminder and veteran Jitender Kumar were also lucky to get byes for a sure semifinal berth in the middleweight and super-heavy weight categories respectively.
However, India were disappointed in the light heavy section with junior national games silver medallist Naveen Kumar losing to Shaun Cox of Bahamas 8-25 and national champion Ajay Kumar went down against David Doan of England 6-10 in the heavy weight class.
With nine Indian boxers making it to the semis in various classes of this tournament, where boxers from 71 countries are taking part, the Indian Amateur Boxing Federation rated it as the best performance so far by Indian boxers in last 15 years.
All the semifinals will be played on Friday.
