Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 18

The correct answer is B, Maharashtra. Kabaddi carries a different local name in almost every region of the subcontinent, and in Maharashtra the game has long been called hu-tu-tu, after the sound of the raider's chant. A is wrong because in Tamil Nadu the game is called sadugudu, and Tamil Nadu is in fact where many trace the oldest form of the sport. C is wrong because in Andhra Pradesh and the Telugu speaking region it is called chedugudu. D is wrong because Punjab is associated not with a separate name but with a separate style, the circle style kabaddi played on a round field with rules different from the standard or national style; the Punjab form has its own world cup. The fourth name worth learning is ha-du-du, used in Bangladesh and in eastern India.

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 B, Arati Saha. The Bengali swimmer crossed the English Channel in September 1959, becoming the first woman from Asia to do so, and in 1960 she became the first Indian sportswoman to be awarded the Padma Shri. Option A is wrong but close enough to be the standard distractor: Bula Choudhury, also from Bengal, crossed the Channel three decades later and is remembered as the first woman to swim across the seven seas, a different record. Option C is wrong because Shikha Tandon is a pool swimmer, known for representing India at the 2004 Athens Olympics, not a Channel swimmer. Option D is wrong because Nisha Millet is likewise a pool and multi-national-medal swimmer of the same era. The male counterpart of this question is Mihir Sen, who crossed the Channel in 1958, a year before Arati Saha.

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 B, 2014. The Pro Kabaddi League, a city-franchise competition played on a mat before a television audience, began in 2014 and is widely credited with turning kabaddi from a rural sport into a professional one with full-time players and sponsorships. Its arrival also raised the profile of raiders and defenders enough for them to be asked about in general knowledge papers. A is wrong because 2012 is the year of the London Olympics and carries no kabaddi milestone. C is wrong because 2016, although a busy year for Indian sport with the Rio Olympics and the South Asian Games at Guwahati where kho-kho was included, is two years after the league started. D is wrong because 2018 is the year of the Jakarta Asian Games, by which time the league had already completed several seasons.

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 A, Mihir Sen. A lawyer from Bengal, he swam the English Channel in 1958 and went on to cross five major seas and straits in a single year, 1966, including the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus and the Panama Canal. He was honoured with the Padma Shri and later the Padma Bhushan. Option B is wrong because Taranath Shenoy was a celebrated deaf long-distance swimmer who crossed the Channel later and received the Padma Shri, but he was not the first Indian across. Option C is wrong because Sachin Nag was a pool sprinter who won the 100 metre freestyle at the first Asian Games in Delhi in 1951. Option D is wrong because Khazan Singh Tokas won a silver in the 200 metre butterfly at the 1986 Seoul Asian Games. The first person of any nationality to swim the Channel was Captain Matthew Webb in 1875.

The correct answer is B, Bonn in Germany. The International Paralympic Committee was founded in 1989 as the world governing body of the movement, and it has been based at Bonn since then; it organises the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games and recognises the national Paralympic committees. Option A is wrong because Lausanne is the seat of the International Olympic Committee, and this is the commonest confusion in the question, since candidates assume the two bodies share a city. Option C is wrong because Monaco houses the headquarters of world athletics, not of the Paralympic movement. Option D is wrong because Kuala Lumpur is associated with regional sporting bodies in Asia and with the badminton federation in earlier years, not with this committee. Fix the pair as Olympic to Lausanne and Paralympic to Bonn.

The correct answer is C, 9. A kho-kho team consists of twelve players of whom nine take the field. Eight of these sit in the central lane facing alternate directions, while the ninth is the active chaser who pursues the defenders; the duty passes when the active chaser touches a seated team-mate from behind and calls out kho. A is wrong because seven is the number of players a kabaddi team puts on the court, and the examiner places the two indigenous games side by side precisely so that the numbers get swapped. B is wrong because eight is only the number of chasers seated in the central lane, one short of the full side on the field. D is wrong because eleven is the playing number in cricket, football and hockey, and has nothing to do with kho-kho.

The correct answer is A, Kolkata. The ground's formal name is Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan, it stands in the Salt Lake area of Kolkata, and it is the largest football stadium in the country and among the largest in the world; the city's clubs and the national team both play there, and it hosted the final of an age-group FIFA World Cup. Option B is wrong because the Guwahati venue is the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium, used for athletics and football. Option C is wrong because the Kochi ground is the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the home of the Kerala football crowd, and it shares its name with the larger stadium in Delhi. Option D is wrong because Margao in Goa has the Fatorda or Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, another well-known football ground. Kolkata's link with football is worth remembering, since its old clubs are among the oldest in Asia.

The correct answer is B, the 1500 metre freestyle, often called the metric mile, which covers thirty lengths of a 50 metre pool and is the longest event on the Olympic pool programme. Option A is wrong because the 800 metre freestyle is shorter, though it is now held for both men and women; for many Games it was the women-only distance while 1500 metres was men-only. Option C is wrong because the 400 metre individual medley, demanding as it is, covers only eight lengths. Option D is a deliberate trap: the 10 kilometre marathon swim, added to the Olympic programme at Beijing in 2008, is indeed the longest Olympic swimming race of all, but it belongs to the open water discipline and is contested in a river, lake or sea, not in a pool. Read such questions for the words "in the pool" before answering.

The correct answer is C, 70 metres. All Olympic recurve events, individual, team and mixed team, are shot at 70 metres at a target face of 122 centimetres. The ranking round of 72 arrows is also shot from this distance, so the whole competition uses one distance and one face, which is what makes the television picture uniform.

Option A is wrong because 50 metres is the compound distance, shot at a smaller 80 centimetre face. Option B is wrong because 60 metres belongs to certain cadet and para categories, not the Olympic recurve event. Option D is wrong because 90 metres was part of the old FITA round shot by men before the single distance format was adopted, which is why it still appears as a distractor. Remember the pair 70 and 122 for recurve and 50 and 80 for compound.

The correct answer is B, Maharashtra. Kho-kho grew up in Maharashtra, and its first written rules were drawn up at Pune by the Deccan Gymkhana in 1914, which is why the state is treated as the home of the game in every standard account. The Kho Kho Federation of India, founded in 1955, carried those rules to the rest of the country. A is wrong because Punjab is associated with the circle style of kabaddi and with rural sports meets, not with the origin of kho-kho. C is wrong because Gujarat is linked with traditional games such as kho-kho only as a later participant, and its distinctive folk forms are different. D is wrong because Karnataka, though strong in the national championships, is not credited with the game's origin or its first code of rules.

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 C, seven: six field players and one goalkeeper, who is distinguished by a red cap while the two teams wear white and dark caps. Option A is wrong because five is the field strength in basketball, not water polo. Option B is wrong but is the standard trap, since six is the number of field players alone; the question asks for the whole side in the water, so the goalkeeper must be counted. Option D is wrong because eleven belongs to football, cricket and hockey, not to water polo. A match is played in four quarters of eight minutes of actual playing time, a team must shoot within a fixed possession period, and players use the eggbeater kick to stay upright with their hands free. Water polo was introduced for men at the Paris Olympics of 1900, making it the first team sport of the modern Games, and the women entered at Sydney in 2000.

The correct answer is C, Knight. The knight moves in the shape of the letter L, two squares along a rank or file and then one square at right angles, and it is the only piece that may pass over any piece standing in its way, its own or the opponent's. This is why a knight is so dangerous in a crowded position and why it can attack a queen without being blocked. Option A is wrong because a bishop slides along diagonals and stops at the first piece in its path, always staying on squares of one colour. Option B is wrong because a rook slides along ranks and files and is blocked in the same way. Option D is wrong because a queen combines the powers of rook and bishop but still cannot jump. Castling moves two pieces at once but is not a jump by an ordinary piece.

The correct answer is B, 1955. The Kho Kho Federation of India was set up in 1955 as the national governing body for the sport, and it organised the first national championship at Vijayawada at the end of that decade; it also instituted the Eklavya Award for the best male player and the Rani Laxmibai Award for the best female player. A is wrong, and is the main trap here, because 1950 is the year the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India was formed; the two federations are five years apart and the examiner relies on candidates mixing them up. C is wrong because by 1960 the federation was already running national competitions. D is wrong because 1965 is later still and is associated with no founding milestone in the sport. Remember the pair as kabaddi 1950 and kho-kho 1955.

The correct answer is C, eight. The American swimmer won eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics of 2008, the most won by any athlete at one Games, and he closed his career as the most decorated Olympian in history with 28 medals, 23 of them gold. Option A is wrong because six is not associated with this record. Option B, seven, is the classic distractor: Mark Spitz of the United States won seven golds at Munich in 1972, a mark that stood for thirty-six years until Phelps passed it by one in Beijing. Option D is wrong because nine golds at a single Games has never been achieved; Phelps did, however, win nine individual Olympic golds over his whole career. Papers often pair this question with the number of medals Phelps won in total, so remember twenty-eight medals and twenty-three golds together.

The correct answer is A, 27 m x 16 m. The rectangular field of play in standard kho-kho is 27 metres long and 16 metres wide, with a wooden pole standing at each end of the central lane and free zones beyond the poles in which the defenders may run. Eight cross lanes divide the central lane into the squares in which the chasers sit. B, C and D are wrong because each alters one of the two measurements, and that is exactly how such questions are set: the candidate who remembers only one of the numbers is drawn to the option that keeps it. Pairing the figure with kabaddi's court, which is 13 metres by 10 metres for men and 12 metres by 8 metres for women, is the quickest way to hold both in memory, since a kho-kho field is roughly twice as long as a kabaddi court.

The correct answer is B, Lausanne in Switzerland, the city that also hosts the International Olympic Committee and many other world federations. The body was founded in 1908 in London during that year's Olympic Games, as the Federation Internationale de Natation, and the shortened form FINA stayed in use until it was renamed World Aquatics in 2023. Option A is wrong because Monaco houses World Athletics, a frequent source of confusion in this question. Option C is wrong because Paris, although the home of several sports bodies in the past, is not the seat of the aquatic federation. Option D is wrong but tempting, since London is where the federation was founded; the founding city and the present headquarters are different, and papers test precisely that gap. World Aquatics governs swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving.