Sunday, May 08, 2016

BC Cup 2016 - Report

Set by Aniket Khasgiwale, Yash Marathe and Aditya Gadre

Format: 30 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. Then a 60 question quarter final to determine the top 4 i.e. the semi finalists. A 40 question Semi final to narrow down to the top 2 in the finals. A 24 question Finals played over two legs (home and away) to determine the winner. 

Report: 
The elims were slightly easier than the previous year with more participants making double digits. Shrirang topped the elims with 14 points. The cut off was 8.5 with two stars. The field was quite strong and the youngsters Snehasis Panda and Rishwin Jackson put in a great performance to qualify for the Quarter finals. Seasoned sports quizzers Anand Sivashankar, Harish Kumar, Kaushik Koley, Sameer Deshpande and Deepanjan Deb all narrowly missed out on qualification. 

The Quarter Finals:
The Quarter finalists were Shrirang Raddi, Venkatraghavan S (aka Ingit Sir), Snehasis Panda, Shubhankar  Gokhale, Anurag Danda, Arnold D'Souza, Rishwin Jackson and Anannya Deb (Dada)

Rishwin started strongly and was leading for a while but as time went on he seemed to run out of steam. Shrirang and Ingit kept giving good answers and comfortably finished the quarters on 7 and 8 points respectively to book their place in the Semi finals. Dada kept missing questions he would normally have got and we ended the quarter with Dada, Arnold and Snehasis tied on 6 points. Dada easily won the regular tie breaker. After a lengthy sudden death tie breaker - Arnold finally prevailed over Snehasis to take the last slot in the Semis.  

The Semi Finals
The Semi finalists were: Shrirang, Ingit, Arnold and Anannya

Ingit continued his sublime form from the quarters to win the semi final and book his place in the final. Shrirang, Anannya and Arnold were locked in a back and forth battle for the second slot - finally Shrirang won with 4 points to Anannya and Arnold's 3. 

The Finals 
Shrirang and Ingit in the final meant we would definitely have a new BC Cup Champion. Shrirang won the toss and went first. The final turned out to be extremely tough with both contestants struggling to score points. Ingit came close with a half answer twice but couldn't strong together enough to score a goal. Just as it looked like we were heading to a penalty shootout for the title, Shrirang answered the second last question of the quiz on Ingit's home leg to seal a very hard fought victory. 

BC Cup Champion 2016 : Shrirang Raddi 
Runner Up : Venkatraghavan S 

List of BC Cup Winners: 
2009: Sameer Deshpande and Suraj Menon
2010: Anannya Deb
2011: Anannya Deb
2012: Sumant Srivathsan
2013: Ramkey V
2014: Prithwish Dutta
2015: Samrat Sengupta
2016: Shrirang Raddi