The 2018 Asian Games medalist, Tirth Mehta, entered the quarter-finals in the Hearthstone at the Esports Federation of India’s (ESFI) National Esports Championships 2022 (NESC ’22) that began on 18 April.
Mehta had won bronze when the Esports was played as the demonstrative title in the 2018 Asiad. Apart from Mehta, Vinayak Subramanian, Karthik Varma Vegesna, Shikhar, Adarsh Shivam, Garv Arora and Manveer Singh also made it to the quarter-final stage in Hearthstone.
Charanjot Singh in FIFA22 also progressed into the quarter-finals as more than 200 athletes from across the country have been battling it out in five popular Esports titles—DOTA 2, Hearthstone, FIFA22, Street Fighter V, and League of Legends.
The other players who advanced in the FIFA22 are: Saransh Rajesh Jain, Karman Singh Tikka, Sagnik Banerjee, Akshat Khandelwal, Saksham Rattam, Soumak Ghosh and Afnan Ameen Khan.
The NESC has been a prestigious national event hosted by ESFI for the esports community since the 2018 Asian Games. This time, however, to add more thrills to the chase and up the level of competition, ESFI has tweaked the format and the national qualifiers are played in a double elimination format. As part of this change, teams and players will now get a second chance to qualify for the finals, making the nail-biting finish of the NESC ’22 a must-watch event.
In DOTA 2, Team Whoops secured their place in the quarter-finals along with Serene.Chaos, Misal 3 Pav, Team Avengers, DMC, Digicont, Stylish Gamers and New Gods while Mohit Sharma, Aman Ahuja, Viplav Bhandari, Kasif Sayyed, Bhagwant Singh, Ayan Biswas, Aditya Verma and Mayank Prajapati will be part of the Last-8 stage of Street Fighter V.
As there are only four teams registered for the esports title League of Legends—Temple of Kings, Support No Vision, Pineapple Cake and Coco Cats—all of them will start their campaign directly in the semi-finals.
Based on the performances of the on-going event, ESFI will be selecting the Indian contingent for the upcoming Asian Games as the players will get a chance to represent the country at the mega event. Esports has been added as the medal sport for the first-time ever in the 2022 Asian Games which is scheduled to take place in Hangzhou, China from 10 to 25 September.
