New Delhi, April 22 : Asian Games 2018 medalist Tirth Mehta entered the quarterfinals in the Hearthstone at the Esports Federation of India’s (ESFI) National Esports Championships (NESC ’22). 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 quarterfinal stage in Hearthstone. Charanjot produced an equally impressive performance in FIFA22 and progressed into the FIFA22 quarterfinal. 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 comm ty since the 2018 Asian Games. This year 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. In DOTA 2, Team Whoops secured their place in the quarterfinals along with Serene.Chaos, Misal 3 Pav, Team Avengers, DMC, Digicont, Stylish Gamers and New Gods. 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 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 semifinals. 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 September 10-25. Over 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 winners of NESC ’22 will participate in the AESF’s Road to Asian Games Regional Qualifiers (June-July, 2022), which will be held for seeding at the main event in China. BAV MR