Eye on India: Vijender should now consider going pro.

Here's a simple quiz for the Indian sports buffs: who are the Indians who have held world No 1 ranking in individual sport ? The list is a short one boasting of Vishy Anand, the Paes-Bhupathi combination, some of the cue sports champions like Geet Sethi and now of course, boxing sensation Vijender Kumar.

And now comes the difficult one: name a non-cricket Indian sporting celebrity, over whom sports management companies have gone to court to reaffirm their rights for handling his portfolio? It may have happened over the marketing rights of the likes of a Zaheer Khan or Yuvraj Singh, but here also, the good-looking Vijender scored a 'first' when IOS and Percept were locked in a legal battle recently over the boxer.

The 23-year-old boxer, named World No 1 as per the latest rankings in the middleweight (75kg) category, had been in the limelight since clinching an Olympic bronze medal in Beijing last year. He may have narrowly missed out on the gold medal at the world championship in Milan last month, but the bronze he won there was good enough to earn him a 200-point lead over the reigning champion in his category - Abbos Atoev of Uzbekistan.

It's once again rare for any Indian sportsperson to maintain the level of consistency and growth in his performance - more so if he or she has managed to come back with something like an Olympic medal that the nation is so starved of. However, Vijender had been quite singleminded in his goal and has already promised more laurels for the country in next year's Commonwealth Games as well as the 2012 London Olympics.

Incidentally, boxing and shooting are two of the Indian disciplines where the national federations quietly pursue a professional training programme - and the returns have also started showing in the international events over the last few years. Now, while the system can only help to give the cutting edge, the credit lies solely with those who take the knocks inside the ring and survive.

Having reached the pinnacle of his sport, what could now be the way forward for Vijender? The middleweight category is possibly the toughest in the professional ring, but then, that could well be the next logical step for him. Is Vijender game?

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