Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 12

The correct answer is B, 1961. The Arjuna Award is the oldest of the individual national sports awards and is given for consistently outstanding performance over four years, together with qualities of leadership, discipline and sportsmanship; the awardee receives a bronze statuette of Arjuna, a scroll and a cash prize. Option A is wrong because 1951 is the year of the first Asian Games at Delhi, a date often confused with this one. Option C is wrong because 1985 belongs to the Dronacharya Award for coaches, which came nearly a quarter of a century later. Option D is wrong because 1991, more precisely 1991 and 1992, is when the Khel Ratna was instituted as the highest sporting honour. Fix the sequence in order: Arjuna 1961, Dronacharya 1985, Khel Ratna 1991, Dhyan Chand 2002.

The correct answer is D, Karnataka. Karnataka won the 2017-18 Vijay Hazare Trophy, beating Saurashtra in the final played in Delhi. The tournament is India's premier domestic limited-overs competition for state teams, run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India since 2002-03, and it is named after Vijay Hazare, the batsman who led India to its first Test victory, against England at Madras in 1952. Karnataka's Mayank Agarwal was the story of that season, scoring 723 runs, the highest total by any batsman in a single edition of the trophy. Option A is wrong because Uttar Pradesh did not reach the 2017-18 final. Option B is wrong because Kerala was knocked out before the final that season. Option C is wrong because Maharashtra also failed to reach the final; Karnataka's opponent was Saurashtra. Exam tip: Vijay Hazare Trophy is the one-day tournament, the Ranji Trophy the first-class one and the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy the Twenty20 one.

The correct answer is D, basketball. Pivoting is the legal turn in which a player holding the ball keeps one foot fixed on the floor, the pivot foot, and steps around with the other foot; it lets a player face the basket or protect the ball without being called for travelling. Option A is wrong because hockey uses bully, short corner, penalty stroke, scoop and dribble. Option B is wrong because volleyball uses service, spike, block, dig and libero. Option C is wrong because badminton uses smash, drop shot, net shot, lob and deuce. Basketball also contributes dunk, rebound, free throw and hold ball to exam papers, and the game's other favourite fact is the ring height of 3.05 metres, so revise the two together. The pivot foot may be lifted to shoot or pass, but it must not return to the floor before the ball leaves the hand.

The correct answer is A, football. An offside trap is a defensive tactic in which the defenders move up the field together at the right moment so that an attacking player is left beyond the last defender when the ball is played forward, and the referee then gives offside. The tactic exists only because football has an offside law. Option B is wrong because badminton has no offside rule; its terms are smash, drop shot, lob and deuce. Option C is wrong because tennis is played across a net with the players in separate courts, so there is no line to be caught behind; its terms are love, deuce, ace and let. Option D is wrong because table tennis is also a net game with its own terms such as chop, loop and let. Hockey has an offside rule in its older form, but the trap as a named tactic is asked for football.

The correct answer is A, 29 August, the birth anniversary of Major Dhyan Chand, the hockey player who won Olympic gold with India in 1928, 1932 and 1936 and is remembered as the wizard of the game. The national sports awards are conferred by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan on this day. Option B is wrong because 14 November is Children's Day, the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru. Option C is wrong because 23 January is the birth anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose, observed as Parakram Diwas. Option D is wrong because 5 September is Teachers' Day, the birth anniversary of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan; because the Dronacharya Award honours teachers of sport, this option is placed here to mislead. Tie the day to the man: Dhyan Chand, 29 August, hockey, National Sports Day.

The correct answer is A, Purma Banerjee. India marched behind its own flag at the Olympics for the first time at Antwerp in 1920, and the athlete Purma Banerjee carried it at the opening ceremony. That was India's first real team at the Games: six members, four athletes and two wrestlers, sent with the help of the industrialist Dorabji Tata, whose support also led to the founding of the Indian Olympic Association in 1927. Earlier, at Paris in 1900, India had been represented by Norman Pritchard competing alone. B is wrong because Dhyan Chand was the hockey great whose teams took gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936, but he was not the first flag bearer. C is wrong because Lal Shah Bokhari carried the flag later, at Los Angeles in 1932. D is wrong because the hockey player Zafar Iqbal was flag bearer at Los Angeles in 1984. Exam tip: 1920 Antwerp — India's first Olympic team, flag carried by Purma Banerjee.

The correct answer is B, 22 yards. The Laws of Cricket fix the pitch at 22 yards between the two bowling creases, that is between the two sets of stumps, which works out to about 20.12 metres; the pitch is 10 feet wide. Option A is wrong because 20 yards is a shorter distance used in some junior formats, not in the standard game. Option C is wrong because 24 yards is simply a nearby figure offered as a distractor. Option D is wrong for the unit rather than the number: 22 metres is longer than the pitch, and the metric value of the pitch is 20.12 metres. This unit swap is the usual trap in such questions, so read yards against metres before answering. Each set of stumps stands 28 inches high and the three stumps together are 9 inches wide.

The correct answer is A, Golf. The Ryder Cup is a team golf tournament, played between teams representing the United States and Europe. It began in 1927 and is named after Samuel Ryder, the English seed merchant who donated the trophy. The event is held every two years, the venue alternating between American and European courses, and unlike most professional golf it is a match-play team contest in which no prize money is paid to the players. The women's equivalent is the Solheim Cup. B is wrong because table tennis has the Swaythling Cup and the Corbillon Cup. C is wrong because cricket's main trophies are the World Cup, the Ashes and the Ranji Trophy. D is wrong because hockey has the Azlan Shah Cup and, in India, the Dhyan Chand Trophy and the Rangaswamy Cup. Exam tip: link golf with the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup, the Walker Cup and the Presidents Cup.

The correct answer is B, lifetime achievement in sports. The Dhyan Chand Award goes to a sportsperson who performed with distinction in the past and has continued to serve the game after retiring, whether by coaching, organising or promoting it. Option A is wrong because no national sports award of India is based on a single season; the Khel Ratna and the Arjuna Award both look at performance across four years. Option C is wrong because excellence in coaching is the province of the Dronacharya Award of 1985. Option D is wrong because an institution or a company that promotes sport is recognised by the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar of 2009. Note the trap created in 2021: after the renaming, the Khel Ratna also bears the name of Dhyan Chand, but the lifetime award is the plain Dhyan Chand Award.

The correct answer is B, the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. Instituted in 1991 and 1992 and renamed in August 2021, it is given for the most spectacular and outstanding performance by a sportsperson over the four preceding years and stands at the top of the national sports awards. Option A is wrong because the Arjuna Award, though the oldest of the group and highly regarded, recognises consistently outstanding performance and ranks below the Khel Ratna. Option C is wrong because the Dronacharya Award is not a player's award at all; it honours coaches whose trainees have won international honours. Option D is wrong because the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award belongs to adventure activity on land, at sea and in the air, not to competitive sport. The order worth memorising is Khel Ratna, then Arjuna, with Dronacharya for coaches alongside them.

The correct answer is B, 3.05 metres. The ring, or basket, is fixed with its upper edge 3.05 metres above the floor, that is exactly 10 feet, and the measurement has not changed since the game was invented by James Naismith in 1891. Option A is wrong because 2.44 metres is the height of a football goal, and also the height of the crossbar in the question papers that mix the two games. Option C is wrong because 3.5 metres is a round figure with no place in the rules, offered only because it is close. Option D is wrong because 2.43 metres is the height of a volleyball net for men, the companion figure to 2.24 metres for women. The safest way to keep them apart is to remember the game with each number rather than the number alone.

The correct answer is A, Koneru Humpy. Humpy, from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, earned the open Grandmaster title in 2002 while in her teens, and at that time she was the youngest woman in the world to have done so. She has also been a world champion in the rapid form of the game. The open Grandmaster title should not be confused with the separate Woman Grandmaster title, which several Indian players earned earlier. Option B is wrong because Dronavalli Harika, a three-time bronze medallist at the Women's World Championship, took the title after Humpy. Option C is wrong because Tania Sachdev holds the International Master and Woman Grandmaster titles. Option D is wrong because Vaishali Rameshbabu, the sister of R Praggnanandhaa, became a Grandmaster much later, in the present generation of Indian players.

The correct answer is A, adventure on land, sea and air. The award was instituted in 1994 and is named after Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa mountaineer who stood on the summit of Everest with Edmund Hillary in 1953; it has separate categories for land adventure such as mountaineering, water adventure such as sailing and rafting, air adventure such as skydiving and paragliding, and a lifetime achievement category. Option B is wrong because chess players are eligible for the ordinary sports awards, as Viswanathan Anand's Khel Ratna shows. Option C is wrong because para athletes also receive the Khel Ratna, the Arjuna Award and the rest, which are open to them on the same footing. Option D is wrong because rural and indigenous games such as kabaddi and kho-kho are covered by the regular sports awards too.

The correct answer is A, Major Dhyan Chand, who was born on 29 August 1905. National Sports Day is observed on his birthday every year, and it is the day on which the President presents the national sports awards, among them the Khel Ratna, the Arjuna Award and the Dronacharya Award. The highest of those honours now carries his name as the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award.

Option B, Balbir Singh Sr, was the great centre forward of the 1948, 1952 and 1956 teams, but no national day is tied to his birth. Option C, Milkha Singh, was an athlete who famously finished fourth in the 400 metres at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Option D, K. D. Jadhav, was the wrestler who won India's first individual Olympic medal, a bronze at Helsinki in 1952. None of the three is connected with 29 August.

The correct answer is C, seven. A water polo team plays with seven players in the pool, six field players and one goalkeeper, with substitutes on the bench. Option A is wrong because five is the number for basketball. Option B is wrong because six is the number for volleyball, and also for ice hockey. Option D is wrong because nine is the number for baseball and softball. The group of seven is worth learning together, because water polo, handball, netball and kabaddi all field seven players, and papers often ask which of the listed games is played with seven. Keep the other counts beside them: eleven for cricket, football and field hockey, four for polo, fifteen for rugby union and two or four for badminton and tennis according to the event.

The correct answer is B, French Open. The Coupe des Mousquetaires, or Musketeers' Cup, is handed to the men's singles winner at Roland Garros. It is named after the four French players, Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and Rene Lacoste, who were nicknamed the Four Musketeers and who carried French tennis through the 1920s.

Option A, the US Open, gives its champions a trophy known simply as the US Open trophy and has no separate historical name of this kind. Option C, Wimbledon, awards the Gentlemen's Singles Trophy, a gilded silver cup, and the Venus Rosewater Dish to the women. Option D, the Australian Open, awards the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup to the men. The French names in the options are the giveaway: both French Open trophies carry French names, the Coupe des Mousquetaires and the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen.

The correct answer is A, the best university in inter-university tournaments. Instituted in 1956 and 1957 and named after India's first education minister, it is a rolling trophy given to the university with the best overall performance across the inter-university competitions of the year, and it is the oldest of the national sports honours. Option B is wrong because the state that hosts the National Games receives no trophy for hosting; the Games have their own championship trophy for the best performing state contingent. Option C is wrong because the Khelo India School and Youth Games have their own medal tally and awards and are unconnected with this trophy. Option D is wrong because an individual athlete's excellence is recognised by the Khel Ratna and the Arjuna Award, both of which go to persons rather than institutions.

The correct answer is A, polo. A chukker is one period of play in polo, and a match is made up of several chukkers with breaks between them so that the ponies can be changed. Polo also gives the words mallet for the stick and goal for the scoring unit, and a team has four players. Option B is wrong because a period in boxing is a round, and its terms are jab, hook, uppercut and knockout. Option C is wrong because wrestling speaks of a pin fall, a hold and a half nelson. Option D is wrong because archery uses the words end, gold, quiver and recurve, and its Olympic distance is 70 metres. Chukker is one of the four or five terms that decide these questions, so learn it with bully for hockey and half nelson for wrestling.

The correct answer is C, corporate entities and institutions that promote sport. Instituted in 2009, it recognises companies, public sector undertakings, sports control boards and other bodies that identify and nurture young talent, employ sportspersons, build and run facilities or support sport through corporate social responsibility. Option A is wrong because individual athletes are honoured by the Khel Ratna, the Arjuna Award and the Dhyan Chand Award, each of which is a personal honour. Option B is wrong because coaches and trainers receive the Dronacharya Award of 1985, which is also personal. Option D is wrong because sports journalism has no national sports award of its own in this list; writers and commentators may instead be considered for the civilian Padma honours. The clue lies in the name, since protsahan means encouragement, that is, the promotion of sport.

The correct answer is A, 1.524 metres, that is five feet at the centre of the court, with the net standing slightly higher, 1.55 metres, at the posts. Option B is wrong for that reason: 1.55 metres is the height at the posts, not at the centre, and the question asks for the centre. Option C is wrong because 2.24 metres is the height of a volleyball net for women. Option D is wrong because 1.07 metres is close to the height of a tennis net at the posts, which is 1.07 metres against 0.914 metres at the centre. Badminton questions usually pair this figure with the court length of 13.4 metres and the doubles width of 6.1 metres, the singles width being 5.18 metres, so revise all four together.