“It is a pleasure for any quizmaster to host a show at Kolkata” said Pickbrain appreciating the mature audience and the quality of the teams that competed at Tata Crucible. A packed ballroom at the awe inspiring Taj Bengal was a perfect setting for an afternoon of cerebral combat. The proceedings began with a relatively tougher prelim that led to the following finalists in the Tata and non-Tata track of the quiz.

Tata Track Finalists

• TCS: Abhishek Das and Sudip Kalyan Dey
• Tata Teleservices: Sayantan Dasgupta and Sreejib Chakraborthy
• mJunction: Debashish Mukerjee and Rajiv Chatterjee
• TCS: Bishwabijoy Sen and Bhavin Zaveri
• Tata Teleservices: Ravi Ranjan and Jitendra Mahapatra
• TCS: Bhaskar Dutta and Niraj Chaudhary

Non Tata Track Finalists

• Cognizant: Prashnik Nag and Ganasanjeev Kavala
• P&G: Abhishek Kumar and Karthik
• ABP Ltd: Subhrangshu Banerjee and Trishit Mazumdar
• HDPI: Anirvan Bhadra and Saurabh Deora
• Cognizant: Abheek Maitra and Javed Mullick
• ITC: Abhijit Bhattacharya and Tanmay Prusty

The Tata track of the quiz was a three way battle with two TCS teams represented by Abhishek Das / Sudip Kalyan Dey, Bishwabijoy Sen / Bhavin Zaveri and the duo from mJunction. After the first couple of rounds Bishwabijoy Sen and Bhavin Zaveri tried to push on the buzzer and could not, just as mJunction got it right to get ahead.

In quick time Sudip and Abhishek caught up and it was then a battle between the two of them. It went right down to the final two questions with the teams tied on 60 a apiece when mJunction got ahead and won the quiz for the fourth consecutive year while Abhishek Das and Sudip Kalyan Dey finished behind them yet again (they were the runner up in 2010 as well).

The external (non Tata) track of the quiz was a complete contrast with all six teams battling hard for the points, choosing caution against aggression and playing each question on its merit. Cognizant represented by Abheek Maitra and Javed Mullick were leading by the end of the second round with ABP, ITC and HDPI trailing them.

As the buzzers came into play, the Cognizant duo tried to push ahead and on each attempt got a negative and backing themselves on half sure situations proved to be too expensive at the end of the day as they went down from a solid score of 30 in a tight final to 15.

ABP also missed a few attempting to move on while HDPI chose to play wait and watch. Team ITC, at this stage decided to push forward and the lead they achieved put them in a good position from where they just grew from strength to strength ensuring they got into the national final. HDPI aided by some prudent play and the negatives taken by the others finished runner up.