Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 23

The correct answer is B, Ranjitsinhji. Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji, the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, played for Sussex and for England at the end of the nineteenth century and was among the first cricketers of Indian birth to be ranked with the greatest batsmen of his time. When the Board started a national first-class championship in 1934-35 it named the competition after him, and the trophy itself was presented by Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patiala. Option A, Duleepsinhji, was his nephew and also played for Sussex and England; the Duleep Trophy, begun in 1961-62, carries his name, and the two princes are the commonest pair to be confused here. Option C, Vijay Merchant, gives his name to the under-16 championship. Option D, C. K. Nayudu, captained India in her first Test match in 1932 and gives his name to the under-23 championship.

The correct answer is A, C.K. Nayudu. Cottari Kanakaiya Nayudu led India in its first Test match at Lord's in 1932 and is regarded as the first great Indian cricketer; the Board of Control for Cricket in India named its lifetime achievement award after him. Option B, Lala Amarnath, scored India's first Test century in 1933 and captained the first Indian team to tour Australia after independence in 1947 and 1948, so he is a first in two other senses and is offered here for that reason. Option C, Vijay Hazare, was the captain when India won its first Test match, against England at Madras in 1952, and the domestic one-day tournament carries his name. Option D, Vijay Merchant, was a distinguished batter of the same era with a very high first-class average but was not the first captain. Keep the three firsts apart: first captain Nayudu, first century Amarnath, first win under Hazare.

The correct answer is A, Lahore. The first edition was staged in 1924 at Lahore, then the chief city of undivided Punjab, under the name the All India Olympic Games, and its purpose was to create a national meet from which an Indian team could be picked for the Olympic Games. For the next decade and a half the competition moved every two years between the large cities of British India. Option B, Bombay, is the strongest distractor because the 1940 edition was held there, and that is the edition at which the name was changed to the National Games; the city is right for the renaming and wrong for the founding. Option C, Calcutta, hosted an edition in the late nineteen thirties and was then the largest city in the country, which makes it plausible but incorrect. Option D, Madras, also hosted editions in the early decades but was not the venue of the first. Fix the pair as Lahore for 1924 and Bombay for 1940.

The correct answer is B, The Open Championship. Often called the British Open, it was first played in 1860 and is the oldest of the majors; it is run by The R&A and its trophy is the Claret Jug. Option A is wrong because the Masters is the youngest of the four, dating from 1934. Option C is wrong because the PGA Championship began in 1916. Option D is wrong because the U.S. Open began in 1895, which makes it older than the other two American majors but still younger than The Open. The order of founding, 1860, 1895, 1916 and 1934, is worth memorising, because questions are set both on the oldest and on the newest major. Remember too that The Open is the only major played outside the United States each year.

The correct answer is B, 1934-35. The Board of Control for Cricket in India set up a national first-class championship in 1934 and the first season was played in 1934-35, with Bombay winning the title. Option A, 1928-29, is the year the Board itself was founded, in 1928, and is the natural wrong answer for anyone who remembers one date and uses it for the other. Option C, 1947-48, is the season after independence and has no special link with the trophy. Option D, 1959-60, is the year the Irani Cup was started, to mark twenty-five years of the Ranji Trophy, which is itself a useful cross-check: 1934-35 plus twenty-five seasons lands on 1959-60. Keep the sequence in order: the Board in 1928, the Ranji Trophy in 1934-35, the Irani Cup in 1959-60 and the Duleep Trophy in 1961-62.

The correct answer is B, the pommel horse. The men's programme has six apparatus, the floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar, and of these the pommel horse, the rings, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar appear in no women's event. A is wrong because the vault is one of the two apparatus common to men and women, the other being the floor exercise, which is why men compete on six and women on four. C is wrong because the balance beam is a women's apparatus, a padded beam ten centimetres wide on which steadiness is prized. D is wrong because the uneven bars, two horizontal bars set at different heights, also belong only to the women's programme; candidates confuse them with the men's parallel bars, which are at the same height and set side by side. Learn the two common apparatus first and the rest follows.

The correct answer is B, 1940. The competition had been held since 1924 under the name the All India Olympic Games, and at the Bombay edition of 1940 it was renamed the National Games, which it has remained ever since. Option A, 1924, is the year of the first edition at Lahore, when the older name was still in use, so it marks the founding and not the renaming. Option C, 1947, is the year of independence and is offered because a change of national name seems natural at that moment, but the renaming had already taken place seven years earlier. Option D, 1985, is a real milestone for a different reason: the New Delhi edition of that year reorganised the Games on the pattern of the Olympic Games, bringing in a host state, a torch relay, a mascot and a far wider list of disciplines, but it did not change the name. Keep the three dates in order: 1924 founded, 1940 renamed, 1985 restructured.

The correct answer is A, long jump in 2003. Anju Bobby George won the bronze in the long jump at the World Athletics Championships in Paris in 2003, the first medal won by any Indian, man or woman, at those championships. Option B is wrong because she competed in the long jump, not the triple jump, although she began in the triple jump early in her career. Option C is wrong because the year is 2003; in 2005 she won the World Athletics Final, which is a different competition and often used as a distractor. Option D is wrong on both counts, since the event was the long jump and no Indian won a medal at the 2001 championships. Pair this with the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games medals she also won, and remember that her husband Robert Bobby George was her coach.

The correct answer is B, the Ranji Trophy champion and a Rest of India side. The Irani Cup is a single first-class match in which the team that has just won the Ranji Trophy meets a Rest of India eleven drawn from all the other state teams, and a good performance in it has long been treated as a step towards national selection. It was begun in 1959-60 to mark twenty-five years of the Ranji Trophy and is named after Z. R. Irani, a patron of the Board. Option A describes the zonal format in which the Duleep Trophy was originally played, between North, South, East, West and Central Zone. Option C names the selected sides used in the Duleep Trophy in later years. Option D is invented; the winners of the one-day and Twenty20 championships do not meet each other, as the two tournaments stand separately.

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, Indian Olympic Association. The Indian Olympic Association is the national Olympic committee of the country, and it conducts the National Games in partnership with the Olympic association of the host state, deciding the list of disciplines, approving the venues and ratifying the results, with support from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. Option A, the Sports Authority of India, is a government body that runs training centres, coaching schemes and sports science support for athletes, so it assists the Games without organising them. Option C, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, governs only cricket and has no role in a multi-sport event; cricket has not been a regular National Games discipline. Option D, the National Sports Development Fund, is a financing mechanism through which money is channelled to athletes and federations, not an organising body. The simple rule is that the national Olympic committee runs the domestic Olympic-style Games.

The correct answer is B, shooting. Avani Lekhara won the ten metre air rifle standing event in the SH1 class at the Tokyo Games, becoming the first Indian woman to win a Paralympic gold, and she took a second medal at the same Games in the fifty metre rifle three positions event. Option A is wrong because archery is the sport in which Harvinder Singh won India’s first Paralympic medal, a bronze at Tokyo, and archery is also where the movement itself began at Stoke Mandeville. Option C is wrong because the Indian badminton golds at Tokyo were won by Pramod Bhagat and Krishna Nagar, in the sport’s first appearance at the Games. Option D is wrong because the Indian athletics golds at Tokyo came in the javelin, won by Sumit Antil.

The correct answer is C, the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Begun in 2006-07, soon after Twenty20 became an international format, it is the championship in which the state teams play the twenty-over game, and it is named after Syed Mushtaq Ali of Indore, who was the first Indian to score a Test century abroad. Option A, the Vijay Hazare Trophy, is the fifty-over one-day championship for the same state teams and began in 2002-03. Option B, the Deodhar Trophy, is also a one-day tournament, named after D. B. Deodhar and long played between zonal sides. Option D, the Duleep Trophy, is first-class cricket over several days. The set to memorise is three tiers for three formats: the Ranji Trophy for first-class cricket, the Vijay Hazare Trophy for fifty overs and the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy for Twenty20.

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 B, Gujarat. The 36th National Games were held in Gujarat in 2022, spread across Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot and Bhavnagar, with the mascot Savaj, an Asiatic lion cub chosen because the Asiatic lion survives in the wild only in that state. Option A, Goa, hosted the next edition, the 37th, in 2023, with the mascot Moga the gaur, so it is the closest wrong answer. Option C, Kerala, hosted the 35th edition in 2015, with Ammu the great hornbill as mascot, and had also hosted in 1987. Option D, Uttarakhand, hosted the 38th edition in 2025, with Mauli the Himalayan monal. The sequence worth memorising is Kerala for the 35th, Gujarat for the 36th, Goa for the 37th and Uttarakhand for the 38th, since questions on this topic almost always come from these four.

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, under-19. The Cooch Behar Trophy is the multi-day inter-state championship for players under the age of nineteen and is named after the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, an early patron of the game in India. It is the stage on which most Indian Test players are first noticed. Option A, under-16, is the age group of the Vijay Merchant Trophy. Option C, under-23, is the age group of the Col. C. K. Nayudu Trophy, which is the first-class level of age-group cricket and sits just below the senior Ranji Trophy. Option D, under-25, is not an age group the Board runs a national championship for. The ladder worth memorising runs upward in order: the Vijay Merchant Trophy at under-16, the Cooch Behar Trophy at under-19, the Col. C. K. Nayudu Trophy at under-23 and then the Ranji Trophy at senior level.

The correct answer is A, Asiatic lion. Savaj was a cub of the Asiatic lion, and it was chosen as the mascot of the Gujarat edition of 2022 because the Gir forest of Gujarat is the only place in the world where that subspecies survives in the wild, making the lion the obvious emblem of the host state. Option B, the Indian bison or gaur, was the basis of Moga, the mascot of the Goa edition of 2023, since the gaur is the state animal of Goa. Option C, the great hornbill, was the basis of Ammu, the mascot of the Kerala edition of 2015, the great hornbill being the state bird of Kerala. Option D, the snow leopard, is a Himalayan animal and has not been a National Games mascot; at Uttarakhand in 2025 the mascot was Mauli, a Himalayan monal, which is the state bird. The general rule that answers all such questions is that the mascot comes from the wildlife of the host state.

The correct answer is B, 2008. The Board of Control for Cricket in India announced the league in 2007 and the first season was played from April to June 2008, with Lalit Modi as the first chairman and commissioner and eight city franchises taking part. Option A, 2007, is the year of the announcement and also the year India won the first Twenty20 World Cup, which is why many candidates mark it; the announcement and the first season fall in different years, so the distinction matters. Option C, 2009, is the year of the second season, which was moved to South Africa because the general election in India was held at the same time. Option D, 2010, is the third season. The chain to remember is announcement in 2007, first season and Rajasthan Royals as champions in 2008, and South Africa in 2009.

The correct answer is B, Goa. The 37th National Games were held in Goa in 2023, the state hosting them for the first time after a long wait, with events spread across Panaji and other centres and with the mascot Moga, a gaur or Indian bison, the state animal of Goa. Option A, Gujarat, hosted the previous edition, the 36th, in 2022, with the mascot Savaj, so the two are easily reversed and it is worth fixing the order as Gujarat then Goa. Option C, Jharkhand, hosted an earlier edition at Ranchi in 2011. Option D, Assam, hosted at Guwahati in 2007 and was the first north-eastern state after Manipur to stage the event. Remember the recent run in order of year: Kerala in 2015, Gujarat in 2022, Goa in 2023 and Uttarakhand in 2025.