By Siddharth Mishra
Jamshedpur: After being labelled as runners-up, three years back NIT Jamshedpur proved a point by winning the Tata Crucible Campus City Edition in 2015.
Since then they have never looked back. Leading the pack was Palak Kumar, who was an integral part of the NIT team which was on the winning side for the last three years.
Palak and Akash finished runners up in 2014, and finally became champions in 2015. After Akash graduated, the team of Palak and Sudeep and Sudeep Saurabh continued the streak after learning from their senior and mentor Akash Kumar. They became champions at the city level for the next two years.
Both of them are final year students in NIT Jamshedpur, who will be completing their Bachelor in Technology in Electronics and Communications. In 2016, they had a one-sided victory, while in 2017 they won the quiz on the last question, giving the quiz a nail biting finish. But the problem lied in their performance at the Zonal level, they had suffered let downs for three consecutive years.
The city of Jamshedpur in the first year itself had given a national finalist from XLRI, but the wait for the next national finalist lasted for 12 years. The team of Palak and Sudeep cruised through in the Zonal finals in Kolkata, hence qualifying for the National Finals in Mumbai. This was the first time in 12 years that a team from Jamshedpur will be in the National Finals.
The eastern zonal final comprises of city edition winners from Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Patna, Varanasi, Shillong, Kolkata, Guwahati and Bhubaneshwar. The eastern Zonal Final is considered as �the zone of death� by the highly-reputed Quizmaster Giri Pickbrain, because of the high level of competency between the teams.
After tremendous sacrifice and hard-work they finally won the Zonal level and they did it in style. After the first half of the quiz it was evident that other teams were fighting for spot to finish second. The top two teams in the Zonal finals go on to the national finals, NIT Jamshedpur and NIT Silchar qualified from the zone of death.
The national finals will be in held in Mumbai on 6th May 2017, where winners from different zones will be fighting out for the ultimate prize.
The winners will get 5 lakh rupees as the prize money and a Tata Bolt each. The Steel city hopes that the team of Palak and Sudeep end the quest of a National Champion from Jamshedpur, by winning the 13th edition of the Tata Crucible Campus Edition.
