Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 13

The correct answer is B, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. It invites nominations through the national federations, the Indian Olympic Association, the Sports Authority of India and the state governments, places them before a selection committee headed by a retired judge, and arranges the ceremony at which the President confers the awards. Option A is wrong because the Ministry of Home Affairs handles the gallantry awards such as the Param Vir Chakra in their civil aspects and the police medals, not sports honours. Option C is wrong because the Ministry of Culture looks after the Sangeet Natak Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi honours in the arts. Option D is wrong because the Ministry of Education runs the national teachers' awards and the literacy programmes. The Padma awards, which some sportspersons also receive, are announced by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

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 B, 40 millimetres. A table tennis ball is 40 millimetres across and weighs 2.7 grams, and it is made of plastic with a matt white or orange surface. Option A is wrong because 38 millimetres was the older size, used until the ball was enlarged at the start of the 2000s to slow the game down for television, so it is a historical figure rather than the present one. Option C and option D are wrong because 42 and 45 millimetres are simply larger round numbers offered as distractors and appear in no rule. Learn the ball with the table: the table is 2.74 metres long, 1.525 metres wide and 76 centimetres above the floor, and the net across it is 15.25 centimetres high. The older 38 millimetre ball also weighed less, at about 2.5 grams, which is why the two figures are asked together.

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, Eden Gardens, Kolkata. The ground was laid out in 1864, which makes it the oldest cricket ground in the country by a wide margin; it is the home of the Cricket Association of Bengal, one of the largest cricket grounds in the world by seating and is often called the Lord's of the East because of its history and its crowds. Option A is wrong because the Wankhede Stadium was built in the 1970s after a dispute with the Cricket Club of India, which owned the older Brabourne Stadium nearby. Option C is wrong because the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium at Bengaluru dates from the same decade and is the home of the Karnataka State Cricket Association. Option D is wrong because Green Park at Kanpur, though the oldest Test venue of Uttar Pradesh, came long after Eden Gardens. Fix the year 1864 with the name, since the question is sometimes asked the other way round.

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 D, Kolkata. The Royal Calcutta Golf Club was founded in 1829 in the city that was then the capital of British India, and it is counted as the first golf club established anywhere outside Britain. Option A is wrong because Shimla, though a favourite hill station of the same administration and the birthplace of the Durand Cup in football, received its golf course much later. Option B is wrong because the Gulmarg course in Kashmir, famous for its height and its setting, also came after Kolkata. Option C is wrong because Mysore has a long sporting tradition under its rulers but no claim to the first golf club. The safe rule for early Indian sport is that the first of almost anything belongs to Kolkata, which held the capital and the largest British population of the time.

The correct answer is B, Payyoli Express. P. T. Usha comes from Payyoli in the Kozhikode district of Kerala, and her speed on the track earned her the name of her village. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics she finished fourth in the 400 metres hurdles, missing the bronze by one hundredth of a second, and at the 1986 Seoul Asian Games she won four golds and a silver.

Option A, Dhing Express, belongs to Hima Das of Dhing in Assam, who won the 400 metres at the 2018 World Under-20 Championships. Option C is a loose description, not the nickname papers use. Option D, Udan Pari, or flying fairy, is a name associated with the sprinter Dutee Chand in press reports and not with Usha. Since two of the four options are genuine athletics nicknames, the question turns on knowing which village goes with which runner.

The correct answer is B, Sachin Tendulkar, the cricketer, who received the Bharat Ratna in 2014, soon after retiring from international cricket, and who remains the youngest person ever to be given the highest civilian honour of the country. Option A is wrong because Milkha Singh, the sprinter who came fourth in the four hundred metres at the Rome Olympics of 1960, received the Padma Shri and not the Bharat Ratna. Option C is wrong because Major Dhyan Chand, for all his three Olympic golds in hockey, was honoured with the Padma Bhushan, and the Khel Ratna was renamed after him in 2021 instead. Option D is wrong because P. T. Usha, the athlete who narrowly missed a medal at the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984, received the Padma Shri and the Arjuna Award.

The correct answer is C, 64. A chessboard is a square divided into eight rows, called ranks, and eight columns, called files, so the number of squares is 8 multiplied by 8, that is 64. They are coloured alternately light and dark, 32 of each, and the board is turned so that each player has a light square in the bottom right corner. Each side begins with 16 pieces, which fill the first two ranks, so 32 of the 64 squares are occupied at the start. Option A is wrong because 36 would be a six by six board. Option B is wrong because 49 would be seven by seven. Option D is wrong because 81 is the nine by nine grid of Sudoku, not of chess. Remember the pair of figures: 64 squares and 32 pieces.

The correct answer is C, 42.195 kilometres, that is 26 miles and 385 yards. The distance was fixed after the London Olympic Games of 1908, where the course was lengthened to finish in front of the royal box, and it has been the standard ever since. Option A is wrong because 40 kilometres is only the approximate figure people quote in conversation and is not the official distance. Option B is wrong because 41.195 kilometres changes the first figure while keeping the familiar decimal, which is the commonest distractor in this question. Option D is wrong because 45.195 kilometres is longer than any marathon course. A half marathon is exactly half of the standard distance, 21.0975 kilometres, and that figure is also asked. The full Olympic marathon is run on the road, and the men and women run the same distance, unlike most track events.

The correct answer is C, Faster, Higher, Stronger. The three Latin words were suggested to Pierre de Coubertin by his friend Henri Didon, a French priest and educator who used them for the pupils at his school, and Coubertin adopted them for the Olympic movement. In 2021 a fourth word, Communiter, meaning Together, was added, so the complete motto is now Citius, Altius, Fortius, Communiter.

Option A replaces Higher with Farther, which sounds plausible for athletics but is not the Latin word used. Option B replaces Faster with Braver, another word that fits the spirit of the Games but not the motto. Option D mixes the order and inserts Together in the place of Stronger, which is a good trap now that Communiter has been added at the end. Remember the sequence exactly as it runs, one word for each of speed, height and strength, with togetherness added last.

The correct answer is A, Ahmedabad. The ground stands in the Motera area of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, inside the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Sports Enclave, and after rebuilding it became the largest cricket stadium in the world by seating capacity; it was given its present name in 2021, so papers of earlier years call it the Motera or the Sardar Patel Stadium. Option B is wrong because Surat, though a large city of the same state, has no international cricket venue of this standing. Option C is wrong because the international ground at Pune is the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium at Gahunje. Option D is wrong because the Hyderabad venue is the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium at Uppal. Remember the enclave name too, since a question may mention Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and expect the candidate to see that it refers to the same site.

The correct answer is C, Brazil. The Jules Rimet Trophy, named after the FIFA president who conceived the World Cup, was to be kept permanently by the first nation to win the competition three times. Brazil achieved that in 1970 in Mexico, having already won in 1958 and 1962, and the trophy was handed over to it for good. FIFA then commissioned a new prize, the FIFA World Cup Trophy, awarded from 1974 onwards.

Option A, Italy, had also won three titles by 1982, but the rule applied only to the old trophy, which had already gone to Brazil. Option B, Uruguay, won the first World Cup in 1930 and won again in 1950, so it never reached three wins. Option D, West Germany, won in 1954 and 1974; its 1974 victory came with the new trophy, not the Jules Rimet.

The correct answer is B, Kolkata. Mohun Bagan Athletic Club was founded in 1889 in Kolkata and is among the oldest football clubs of the country. Its victory in the IFA Shield of 1911 against a British regimental team, won by players who took the field barefoot, was celebrated across the country as far more than a sporting result, and the club remains one of the great names of Indian football along with East Bengal, also of Kolkata. Option A is wrong because Jaipur has no connection with the club. Option C is wrong because Lucknow, though rich in its own sporting history, is not its home. Option D is wrong because Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh has no link with it at all. Kolkata is the answer whenever an early Indian club is named.

The correct answer is C, 1975. India won the Hockey World Cup at Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia in 1975, beating Pakistan 2–1 in the final. Ashok Kumar, the son of Dhyan Chand, scored the winning goal and Ajit Pal Singh led the side. It remains India's only World Cup title in the game.

Option A, 1971, is the year of the first Hockey World Cup, played at Barcelona and won by Pakistan, with India finishing third. Option B, 1973, is the second edition at Amstelveen, where India reached the final and lost to the Netherlands on penalty strokes. Option D, 1980, is the year of the Moscow Olympics, where India won its eighth and so far last Olympic gold, and is the most common confusion in this question.

The correct answer is A, Major Dhyan Chand. In August 2021 the government renamed the award the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in memory of the hockey player who won Olympic gold with India in 1928, 1932 and 1936 and whose birthday, 29 August, is National Sports Day. Option B is wrong because Milkha Singh, the Flying Sikh, has stadiums and trophies named for him but not this award. Option C is wrong because K. D. Jadhav, the wrestler who won India's first individual Olympic medal at Helsinki in 1952, is honoured in the naming of other facilities. Option D is wrong because Dhanraj Pillay, the hockey forward of the nineteen nineties, is himself an Arjuna Award and Khel Ratna recipient. Note carefully that the separate lifetime achievement award of 2002 has always carried the plain name Dhyan Chand Award.

The correct answer is A, hockey. In field hockey a bully was the method of restarting play after certain stoppages: one player of each side stood facing the other over the ball and they tapped sticks and ground alternately before playing it. Modern rules restart with a free hit or a bully only in rare cases, but the term still appears in question papers as a hockey word. Option B is wrong because kabaddi uses raider, anti, cant, bonus line and lona, the last meaning that a whole side has been put out. Option C is wrong because volleyball uses service, spike, block and dig. Option D is wrong because baseball uses pitcher, batter, innings, home run and diamond. Bully, along with short corner and penalty stroke, is the set of hockey terms worth memorising.

The correct answer is B, London. Lord's was founded by Thomas Lord and is owned by the Marylebone Cricket Club, the body that framed the laws of cricket and guarded them for two centuries; the final of the first Cricket World Cup in 1975 was played there, and the pavilion holds the game's most famous museum. Option A is wrong because the well-known ground at Sydney is the Sydney Cricket Ground, remembered for its pitch that helps spin bowling. Option C is wrong because the Cape Town venue is Newlands, set below Table Mountain. Option D is wrong because the Auckland ground is Eden Park, which serves both cricket and rugby and should not be confused with Eden Gardens in Kolkata, a trap the setters use often. Two more London grounds are worth carrying: The Oval, where the first Test in England was played, and Wembley, the football stadium.

The correct answer is A, 1888. The Durand Cup was begun at Shimla in 1888 and is named after Mortimer Durand, who was then the foreign secretary of the British Indian government. It is the oldest football tournament in India and in Asia and among the oldest in the world, and it was later shifted to Delhi and then to Kolkata. Option B is wrong because 1911 is the year of Mohun Bagan's famous IFA Shield victory, a date of the same sport but a different event. Option C is wrong because 1934 belongs to the first season of the Ranji Trophy in cricket. Option D is wrong because 1941 is the year the Santosh Trophy, the championship between the states, was started. Keeping these four years apart settles a whole family of questions.