The dumbest quiz show I ever watched

What happens when a cricket commentator dons the role of a quizmaster? Well, the quiz ends up like a cricket match where the umpire plays spoilsport and saps the energy of the players and spectators . This is what I experienced at the recently held Hyderabad leg of the CRY FACT Quiz – 2005.

Noted cricket commentator Gautham Bhimani conducted the show. Right from the beginning it was as if the organizers were trying to test the patience of the participants and the audience. The organizers made the participating teams occupy their seats by 6:30 PM sharp. But they went on dilly-dallying till 7:30 PM to conduct the prelims. The emcee announced that she would get to the point with making much ado but ended up causing a lot of irritation by maintaining an enigmatic silence for more than an hour while everyone was eagerly waiting for the questions to roll down.

Though the quality of questions was good, it was lack of professionalism at handling things that goofed up the whole event. The quiz was like watching two boring bollywood films without any interval. At the end of every round, the quizmaster was groping for the questions cards he had misplaced. So was his dumb team of over 10 people who took more than an eternity to play some audio/video clips. They even screwed up the scores of a team by pushing it back by a few points.

Though I liked some of the questions, I left with the feeling that I had never watched such a boring quiz. The irony is, Titan is one of the co-sponsors. There was even a round on taking `Time’ as the theme. But the quizmaster gave a new definition to Time by taking more than 4 hours to conduct the quiz, which he could have done in less than 2 hours. Everyone was emaciated at the end of the show. I feel it would be good if Gautham Bhimani sticks to what he is good at (i.e., cricket commentary) instead of venturing into an area that requires time management, aplomb and professionalism.