Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 17

The correct answer is C, 7. A kabaddi side fields seven players at a time and keeps five substitutes, so the squad named for a match is twelve. The seven on the mat take turns as raider while the rest defend as antis, and when all seven of a side are put out the opponents earn two bonus points, a result called a lona. A is wrong because five is the number of substitutes in the squad, not the number on court, and five is also the playing number in basketball. B is wrong because six is the playing number in volleyball and has no place in kabaddi. D is wrong because nine is the number of players a kho-kho team puts on the field, and since kabaddi and kho-kho are taught together the examiner places the two numbers in the same set of options very often. Remember the pair as seven for kabaddi and nine for kho-kho.

The correct answer is C, 1972. Archery was part of the 1900 Paris Olympics and a few Games after it, but disappeared from the programme after 1920 because the rules varied from country to country. Once FITA standardised the rounds, the sport returned at the Munich Games of 1972, and it has been shot at every Summer Olympics since, with the recurve bow alone.

Option A is wrong because the 1964 Tokyo Games had no archery event. Option B is wrong because the 1968 Mexico City Games also had none, though archery was demonstrated in earlier years. Option D is wrong because 1976 Montreal was the second Games after the sport returned, not the first. The three dates worth memorising in order are 1900 for the debut, 1920 for the last Games before the break and 1972 for the reinstatement.

The correct answer is C, 50 metres. An Olympic-size or long course pool measures 50 metres in length and 25 metres in width, and all Olympic pool races are swum in it, so a 100 metre race means two lengths and the 1500 metre freestyle means thirty. Option A is wrong because 25 metres is the short course pool used for the World Short Course Championships and for most club meets; records set in it are listed separately from long course records. Option B is wrong because 33 metres matches no recognised standard, though pools of that rough size were used at some very early Olympic Games before the distance was fixed. Option D is wrong because no competition pool is 100 metres long; the 100 metre race is covered in two lengths of a long course pool. The width of 25 metres holds ten lanes of 2.5 metres each.

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, Abhishek Verma. He won the compound individual gold at the 2014 Asian Games held at Incheon in South Korea, one of India's landmark results in the compound bow, and has since been a fixture of the compound team that wins Asian Games and World Cup team medals.

Option A is wrong because Rajat Chauhan is a compound archer with team and individual medals of his own but not this individual title. Option C is wrong because Atanu Das shoots the recurve bow and is known as an Olympic team member. Option D is wrong because Tarundeep Rai, also a recurve archer, is remembered for the individual silver at the 2005 World Championship and for Asian Games team medals. The dividing line to remember is that Abhishek Verma, Rajat Chauhan and Jyothi Surekha Vennam are compound names, while Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Deepika Kumari are recurve names.

The correct answer is B, Ludwig Guttmann. He was a neurologist who had left Germany for England and was put in charge of a spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where he used sport as part of the treatment of soldiers paralysed in the Second World War; on 29 July 1948, the opening day of the London Olympics, he held an archery competition for sixteen injured service personnel. Option A is wrong because Pierre de Coubertin revived the modern Olympic Games in 1896 and founded the International Olympic Committee. Option C is wrong because Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the Special Olympics in 1968, which is a separate competition for athletes with intellectual disabilities. Option D is wrong because Avery Brundage was a president of the International Olympic Committee and had no part in the Stoke Mandeville Games.

The correct answer is B, Bangladesh. Kabaddi, known there as ha-du-du, was declared the national game of Bangladesh after the country's independence, and it is the single most asked fact about the sport in competitive papers. India, despite dominating the game and giving it the Pro Kabaddi League, has no officially declared national game at all, a point examiners also like to test. A is wrong because the national sport of Nepal is volleyball, which replaced dandi biyo. C is wrong because volleyball is also the national sport of Sri Lanka, although cricket is by far the more popular game there. D is wrong because the national sport of Bhutan is archery, which is reflected in its village festivals and in its Olympic entries. Keeping these four South Asian national sports together makes a reliable one-mark answer.

The correct answer is C, grass court. Wimbledon is held at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in London, it is the oldest of the four Grand Slam tournaments and it is the only one still played on grass, a surface on which the ball keeps low and comes quickly on to the racket, so it favours the serve and volley game. Option A is wrong because clay is the surface of the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris, where the ball grips and sits up and long rallies are the rule. Option B is wrong because hard courts are used at both the Australian Open at Melbourne Park and the US Open at Flushing Meadows in New York. Option D is wrong because carpet courts were used in some indoor tournaments in the past and at no Grand Slam today. Learn the four tournaments with their cities and surfaces as a single table, because that is how the question is set.

The correct answer is C, ten. A pool built to the long course standard is marked into ten lanes of 2.5 metres each across its 25 metre width. Only the eight middle lanes are used for racing; the two outside lanes are left empty so that the wash thrown up by the swimmers is absorbed rather than reflected back across the field. This is why a final has eight swimmers although the pool shows ten lanes, and why option B, eight, is the trap in this question: eight is the number of competitors and of racing lanes, not of lanes marked in the pool. Option A is wrong because six lane pools are common in schools and small clubs but not at this level. Option D is wrong because twelve lanes are not part of any aquatic standard. Lane ropes carry coloured floats to mark the last five metres before the wall.

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, mechanical release aid. A compound archer draws and looses the string with a hand held mechanical release, and may also use a magnifying scope and a peep sight set in the string. A recurve archer must draw with the fingers and may use only a plain sight without magnification, which is why recurve scores are lower at the same distance.

Option A is wrong because stabilisers, the long rods that steady the bow, are used with both bows. Option C is wrong because an arrow rest is a basic fitting on the riser of every target bow. Option D is wrong because the finger tab is the leather pad that protects a recurve archer's fingers, so it belongs to the recurve side and cannot be the answer. Questions of this type usually hinge on three compound only items: the release aid, the peep sight and the magnifying scope.

The correct answer is D, 11. A hockey side fields eleven players at a time, one of whom is the goalkeeper, and the other ten are spread across defence, midfield and attack. Substitutes wait off the field and may be sent on and taken off any number of times while play goes on, which is called rolling substitution, but the count on the field never rises above eleven unless the umpire has to be told otherwise.

Option A, 10, is the number a team is left with after a player is sent off with a yellow or a red card, not the normal count. Option B, 16, is the size of the full squad a team names for a tournament such as the Olympics, of whom eleven take the field. Option C, 12, is the number in a kho kho team, of whom nine enter the field. Cricket and football also field eleven players each, which is why such a question often lists several eleven player games together.

The correct answer is A, Lona. When a team succeeds in putting all seven players of the opposing side out, the whole opposing team is revived and the scoring team is awarded two extra points; this achievement is called a lona, sometimes spelt lona or lobh in older rule books. B is wrong because a super raid is a single raid in which the raider collects three or more points, which is impressive but is not the all-out bonus. C is wrong because a bonus point is the single point a raider earns by touching the bonus line with one foot grounded behind it when the required number of defenders is on the mat. D is wrong because a do-or-die raid is the third consecutive raid by a team after two empty raids, in which the raider must score or be declared out; it describes a situation, not a scoring bonus.

The correct answer is B, 1968. Until that year the Majors were reserved for amateurs, and the best players of the day, once they turned professional, could no longer enter them. In 1968 the tournaments were opened to all players, and every season from then on is called the Open Era, which is why the Australian Championships became the Australian Open and the French Championships the French Open.

Option A, 1958, is a decade too early and belongs to the period when the amateur rule was still being argued over. Option C, 1977, is the year of the Wimbledon centenary, a hundred years after 1877, which makes it a plausible looking but wrong choice. Option D, 1988, is the year Steffi Graf completed the Golden Slam and also the year tennis returned to the Olympic Games as a full medal sport at Seoul, so it appears in several tennis questions, just not in this one.

The correct answer is B, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle. One swimmer covers all four strokes in that fixed sequence over 200 or 400 metres, and freestyle is always last. Option A is the order of the medley relay, not of the individual medley, and it is the commonest mistake on this question: in a relay the backstroke leg must come first because backstroke is the only stroke started in the water, so the first swimmer can begin from the wall while the others take flying starts. Option C is wrong because freestyle, the fastest stroke, is deliberately placed at the end of both medleys to make the finish the quickest part of the race. Option D is wrong because breaststroke, the slowest stroke, is swum third in the individual medley and second in the relay, never first. Remember the pair of orders together, since papers often ask them in the same set.

The correct answer is B, Anju Bobby George. She took the bronze in the long jump at the 2003 World Championships at Paris, and that was the first medal India won at a senior World Athletics Championships. Her best jump of 6.83 metres, set at Athens in 2004, stood as the national mark for many years.

Option A, P. T. Usha, won a mountain of Asian medals and came fourth at the 1984 Olympics, but she never stood on a World Championships podium. Option C, Neeraj Chopra, won the world title in 2023 and a silver in 2022, both two decades after Anju's bronze, so he is not the first. Option D, Hima Das, won her 400 metres gold at the World Under-20 Championships in 2018, which is a junior meet and a different competition from the senior Worlds. The word first, and the word senior, decide this question.

The correct answer is D, 720. Each target face has ten rings and the innermost ring scores 10 points, so 72 arrows all in the 10 ring give 72 multiplied by 10, that is 720 points. The ranking round is shot before the knockouts and its total fixes the seedings in the bracket, which is why a high ranking round score matters even though no medal is awarded for it.

Option A is wrong because 600 is the maximum of a 60 arrow round, not a 72 arrow one. Option B is wrong because 660 would need 66 arrows. Option C is wrong because 700 is simply a round number and matches no archery round. The arithmetic to carry into the exam hall is the number of arrows multiplied by ten: 360 for 36 arrows, 720 for 72 arrows and 150 for the 15 arrow compound match.

The correct answer is B, 30 seconds. A raider gets thirty seconds from the moment of entering the opposing half, and the raid must end with a return across the mid line within that time, or the raider is declared out. The limit was introduced to keep play fast and to stop raiders from loitering, and the clock is shown to the players and the crowd during professional matches. A is wrong because twenty seconds is too short and corresponds to no rule in the game, though the number is tempting because a men's half lasts twenty minutes. C is wrong because forty-five seconds exceeds the limit and no raid may run that long. D is wrong because sixty seconds would make breath control meaningless, which is the central skill of the sport, since the raider has to keep chanting the cant in one breath for the whole raid.

The correct answer is C, backstroke. The medley relay order is backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle, and the reason the sequence differs from the individual medley is practical. Backstroke is the only competitive stroke that begins in the water, with the swimmer holding the wall and the feet against it, so it must be given the first leg; the other three swimmers dive in as flying starts once their teammate touches. Option A is wrong because butterfly leads the individual medley but swims third in the relay. Option B is wrong because breaststroke takes the second leg of the relay and the third leg of the individual medley. Option D is wrong because freestyle is the anchor leg in both the medley relay and the individual medley, so that the fastest stroke decides the finish. Each of the four swimmers in a medley relay must swim a different stroke.

The correct answer is C, 1990. Kabaddi was included as a regular medal event at the eleventh Asian Games held at Beijing in 1990, and India won the first gold medal awarded in the sport. A is wrong, and it is the main trap in this question, because at the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi kabaddi was only a demonstration sport; being shown at a Games is not the same as being a medal event. B is wrong because the 1986 Asian Games at Seoul did not carry kabaddi as a medal discipline. D is wrong because by 1998, when the Games were held at Bangkok, kabaddi had already been a medal sport for two editions. A useful chain to remember is Berlin 1936 as an Olympic demonstration, New Delhi 1982 as an Asian Games demonstration, and Beijing 1990 as the first medal event.