As I write this the second test match between India and New Zealand has started at the McLean Park at Napier. Now this reminds me of the most amazing quiz that I had ever taken part in.
It was the Cricket Quiz we had at our college as part of the annual cultural programs when I was in the Final year. It was the first time this had been introduced and there were only two serious teams participating. The others just made up the numbers. Anyways, the prelims were written tests and as expected the two serious teams were chosen to fight it out for the prize. Umesh, Prabhakar and yours truly formed one of the teams._ Prabhakar and myself had just been a team who had thrashed everyone else in the General Quiz. We had 80+ points while the second placed team had something like 20+. A few in the audience walked away while others called it boring.)
The format was interesting where first a team 'bats', ie, answers 6 questions (an over) asked by the quiz master. Then their opponents 'bowl' at them, ie, ask a question on their own. The next round had direct questions and one could be safe or run out. The last round had questions with graded difficulty levels fetching you singles, twos, threes, four and a six!
Anyways, it all went superbly and straight down to the wire. The fours and sixes were extremely difficult and one such question that came out of the blue was directed at us. It just asked us where McLean park was located. I dont know how it came to my mind and I still do not know what made me answer that but I immediately shouted "Napier"!! Everyone was zapped at the answer and the quiz master acknowledged that he never expected anyone to answer that! Unfortunately we lost the quiz by 1 run!!
Going back in time, Quizzes were fun. Was runner up when in the first year, while the next three years brought victory! Not bad, eh?
