It has to do with the “ethos in boxing”, says Matthews, watching athletes at the Olympic village race to the souvenir store as the date of departure nears. “Boxing has a code of conduct. You conduct yourself in a specific way.”

Take the five boxers here, he says: “They feed off of each other. Heaps of times they have been down. They motivate each other. It’s the kind of sport in which you get weeded out of the system if you don’t have a big heart. Boxers are surprisingly sensitive people, caring, compassionate. It’s a different brotherhood. Whatever cost to self, they will help their friends.”

For instance, he adds, look at Akhil. “If Jeetu or one of the others needs him, he will drop everything. These guys can’t be selfish. It’s what I call the old school. This is why they are still very grounded, very down to earth. They won’t get carried away.”

Our fascination with India’s nascent assertion in the most violent of sports may actually boil down to this, he suggests: “In a world where morals and structure and responsibility are getting eroded, these guys lead the way in showing how to conduct yourself.”

Having worked with tennis players (Sania Mirza) before and now also working with shooters (Abhinav Bindra) and badminton players (Saina Nehwal), Matthews says he’d sometimes giggle when he first met the boxers in Bhiwani.

He found that there is a hierarchy in boxing, and there is a way that things have been done, and that way endures. Sometimes he’d be told off by Akhil, who’d explain that this was the method of his predecessors, and so it must be now. For example: “Training’s about to start. A senior will find he’s forgotten, say, his wrist guard. A junior will be sent to the dorms to fetch it. It’s a way of saying, when you are here you will have certain privileges and certain responsibilities.”

... contd.