There was a good 40 minutes delay for the start of the regional rounds of the 10th edition of the Tata Crucible Campus quiz 2014 at GITAM University on Tuesday. The reason – an extraordinary response from college students registering for the preliminary rounds which lead to a shortage of question papers. But the witty quizmaster Giri Balasubramaniam did not let the students go away disappointed.
“Pull out a blank paper and start writing the answers. This is the first time that we are allowing this considering the overwhelming response!” he said.
Students squatted on the floor, some stood with a pen and the answer sheet at a corner of the auditorium packed to the brim with over 380 teams participating from different colleges– all in the hope of cracking the 20 questions of the preliminary round and making it to the dais to compete to be the regional round winners.
After an intense battle of mind and grit, K. Premchand and V. Krishna from GITAM Institute of Technology emerged as winners of the Vizag regional round of the Tata Crucible Campus Quiz. The runners- up position was bagged by Abhinash.T and Venkatratnam.K from GMRIT.
The quizmaster’s inimitable humour, intelligent hints and tricky questions with no straight answers kept the audience in rapt attention throughout the rounds. “The quiz culture is growing very fast in the tier-2 and 3 cities like Vizag. There are committed professionals and students from these cities who are passionate about quizzing,” said Balasubramaniam of quizzing company Greycaps India.Last year, a team from Visakhapatnam Steel Plant emerged winners of the Tata Crucible Business Quiz.
Vice Chancellor GITAM University G. Subrahmanyam was guest of honour and general manager The Gateway Hotel, Visakhapatnam Souvik Bhattacharya was the chief guest at the event presented a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh to the winning team and Rs 50,000 to the runners-up team of the regional round of the quiz. A part of the prize money will be contributed directly to a charity of the winning team’s choice.
The city regional rounds will be followed by zonal finals to be held in Mumbai (West zone), New Delhi (North zone), Kolkata (East zone) and Bengaluru (South zone). The top two teams from each zone would battle it out for the Tata Crucible Campus Quiz 2014 title at the national finals to be held in Mumbai in April.
This will be followed by the international finals where the winners and runners-up from the Indian edition of the quiz will compete with the winners and runner ups of the Singapore and UK editions, held earlier this financial year, to win the International Championship title.
