Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 4

The correct answer is C, K. S. Ranjitsinhji, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, who played for England and was among the outstanding batsmen of his time. The tournament began in the 1934-35 season and Bombay won that first edition; Mumbai has remained by far its most successful team.

Option A, K. S. Duleepsinhji, was Ranjitsinhji's nephew and gives his name to the Duleep Trophy, which is the pair of names this question is built to confuse. Option B, C. K. Nayudu, India's first Test captain, is remembered in the C. K. Nayudu Trophy, the under-23 competition. Option D, Vijay Hazare, gives his name to the domestic one-day tournament. Fix the set in memory by format: Ranji for first-class, Vijay Hazare for one-day, Syed Mushtaq Ali for Twenty20, Cooch Behar for under-19.

The correct answer is C, Manipur. M. C. Mary Kom was born in Kangathei village of Churachandpur district in Manipur.

Mary Kom is the only woman boxer to have won six world championship titles, and she is nicknamed Magnificent Mary. She took the bronze medal in the flyweight class at the London Olympics of 2012, the first Indian woman boxer to win an Olympic medal, and she has also won gold at the Asian Games of 2014 and the Commonwealth Games of 2018. She received the Arjuna Award, the Padma Shri, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan, and served as a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha.

Option A is wrong because Mizoram is best known in Indian sport for footballers. Option B is wrong because Assam is the home state of the boxer Shiva Thapa and the sprinter Hima Das. Option D is wrong because Meghalaya has produced no boxer of this record.

Exam tip: Mary Kom of Manipur, six world titles, bronze at London 2012, called Magnificent Mary.

The correct answer is B, 1962. India won the Asian Games football gold medal twice, first at the inaugural Games in New Delhi in 1951 and again at Jakarta in 1962, where the team beat South Korea in the final. Those two titles, together with the fourth place at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, mark the golden age of Indian football under the coach Syed Abdul Rahim.

Option A, 1958, was the year of the Tokyo Asian Games, at which India did not take the football gold. Option C, 1966, refers to the Bangkok Asian Games and is also the year England won the World Cup, which makes it a tempting but wrong choice. Option D, 1970, was the year of the Bangkok Asian Games at which India won the bronze medal in football, a good result but not the gold.

The correct answer is C, Bhalchandra Bhaskar Bhagwat. The Dronacharya Award, India's honour for coaches who produce outstanding sportspersons, was given for the first time in 1985, and Bhalchandra Bhaskar Bhagwat, a wrestling coach, was among the first three to receive it, along with O.M. Nambiar in athletics and Om Prakash Bhardwaj in boxing. The award is named after Dronacharya, the teacher of the Pandavas and the Kauravas in the Mahabharata, and it carries a bronze statuette of Dronacharya, a certificate and a cash prize. It is given in two categories, regular and lifetime. Option A is wrong because Hansa Sharma was not among the first recipients. Option B is wrong because Karan Singh did not receive the award in 1985. Option D is wrong because Hawa Singh, the boxer, was honoured as a coach much later, not in the first list. Exam tip: the Dronacharya Award began in 1985, the Arjuna Award in 1961 and the Khel Ratna in 1991-92.

The correct answer is B, the Ranji Trophy champion and Rest of India. The Irani Cup is a single first-class match, usually played at the start of the season, in which the reigning Ranji champion meets a Rest of India side drawn from the rest of the country. It began in the 1959-60 season and honours a long-serving administrator of the game.

Option A describes the old zonal format of the Duleep Trophy, in which North, South, East, West and Central Zone met each other. Option C describes the Cooch Behar Trophy, the under-19 competition, while the under-23 tournament is the C. K. Nayudu Trophy. Option D describes the selection sides used in unofficial and tour matches, not a named trophy. Because the Irani Cup depends on the Ranji result, the two names are best learnt together as one fact.

The correct answer is B, Fencing. Chadalavada Anandha Sundhararaman Bhavani Devi is an Indian fencer from Chennai who competes in the sabre event. She became the first Indian fencer to qualify for the Olympic Games, at Tokyo in 2021, and won her opening bout there. She has taken gold at the Commonwealth Fencing Championship and a medal at the Asian Fencing Championship, and she trains with support from the Target Olympic Podium Scheme. Fencing is a sword-fighting sport with three weapons - foil, epee and sabre - fought on a strip called a piste, where hits are recorded electronically. Option A is wrong because rowing is a water sport, in which India has been represented by athletes such as Bajrang Lal Takhar. Option C is wrong because Bhavani Devi has never been a boxer. Option D is wrong because she is not a wrestler. Exam tip: Bhavani Devi is a fencer in the sabre event and the first Indian fencer at the Olympics.

The correct answer is A, hat-trick. A hat-trick in football means three goals scored by the same player in a single match. The term travelled to football from cricket, where it originally meant three wickets in three successive balls and the bowler was rewarded with a hat, and it is now used across several games.

Option B, grand slam, is a term from tennis and golf, where it means winning all four major championships, and it has no place in the laws of football. Option C, a double, in football usually describes a club winning two major competitions in the same season, such as the league and the national cup, not a feat by one player in one match. Option D, a treble, likewise refers to a club winning three trophies in a season, most often the league, the national cup and a continental title.

The correct answer is A, Badminton. The Sudirman Cup is the world mixed team championship of badminton, organised by the Badminton World Federation (BWF). It was first held in 1989 in Jakarta and is named after Dick Sudirman, the founder of the Badminton Association of Indonesia. Each tie has five matches, men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles, so a country needs strong men and women players to win. It is held every two years. The other two team trophies of badminton are the Thomas Cup for men and the Uber Cup for women. B is wrong because baseball's top events include the World Series in the United States and the World Baseball Classic. C is wrong because volleyball has the FIVB World Championship and the Volleyball Nations League. D is wrong because basketball's world event is the FIBA World Cup, and the William Jones Cup is another basketball trophy. Exam tip: badminton team trophies, Thomas Cup (men), Uber Cup (women), Sudirman Cup (mixed).

The correct answer is A, Zimbabwe. India had slipped to 17 for 5 when Kapil Dev came in and made 175 not out at Tunbridge Wells, taking the side to 266 and a win that kept the campaign alive. The innings is quoted in general knowledge papers as the highest by an Indian in that tournament.

Option B, Australia, was beaten by India later in the same group stage, but the big individual innings of that match was not this one. Option C, West Indies, was the team India beat in the final, and also the team India defeated in the very first match of the tournament, so it is an easy wrong pick. Option D, England, was India's semi-final opponent at Old Trafford. Pair this fact with the other 1983 details that are asked: the final at Lord's, Kapil Dev as captain, and Mohinder Amarnath as player of the match.

The correct answer is C, Football. All three are Indian football tournaments. The Durand Cup, first played in 1888 and named after Sir Mortimer Durand, then Foreign Secretary of British India, is Asia's oldest football tournament and is still organised with the help of the armed forces. The Santosh Trophy is the national football championship for state teams, first held in 1941. The Rovers Cup was a famous club tournament played in Mumbai from 1891. Papers often mix these with trophies from other sports, so learn them in sets. A is wrong because hockey's well-known Indian trophies include the Beighton Cup and the Aga Khan Cup. B is wrong because cricket's domestic trophies are the Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy, Irani Cup and Vijay Hazare Trophy. D is wrong because badminton's world team events are the Thomas Cup for men, the Uber Cup for women and the Sudirman Cup for mixed teams. Exam tip: Durand, Santosh, Rovers, Federation Cup = football; Ranji, Duleep, Irani = cricket; Beighton, Aga Khan = hockey.

The correct answer is B, states and units. The Santosh Trophy, started in 1941 and named after the Maharaja of Santosh in undivided Bengal, is the national football championship of India, played between teams representing the state associations and certain institutional units such as the services and the railways. It is the oldest surviving national competition of its kind in Indian football.

Option A, clubs of the top division, describes the national league competitions rather than the Santosh Trophy. Option C, schools, is the domain of the Subroto Cup, begun in 1960 and organised in New Delhi for school teams from across the country and abroad. Option D, universities, points to inter university championships organised by the Association of Indian Universities, which are separate from the Santosh Trophy.

The correct answer is B, Brazil. Brazil has won the FIFA World Cup five times, in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002, more than any other nation. It is also the only country to have appeared in every edition of the tournament since it began, which is a favourite second question of examiners on the same fact.

Option A, Germany, has four titles, won in 1954, 1974, 1990 and 2014, the first three as West Germany. Option C, Italy, also has four, won in 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006, so Germany and Italy are tied in second place. Option D, Argentina, has won the trophy in 1978, 1986 and 2022, which places it with Uruguay on two before 2022 and three afterwards, still short of Brazil's tally.

The correct answer is B, Chetan Sharma, who dismissed three New Zealand batsmen in successive balls at Nagpur in the 1987 World Cup. No bowler had managed a hat-trick in the four earlier editions, so the record stands as the first of its kind in the tournament.

Option A, Kapil Dev, was India's captain and leading all-rounder in that era and is the name candidates reach for by habit, but the hat-trick was not his. Option C, Wasim Akram, took two hat-tricks in Test cricket and one in one-day internationals, though not the first in a World Cup; he was, however, the player of the match in the 1992 final. Option D, Glenn McGrath, holds the record for the most wickets in World Cup history, which is the fact most often paired with this question in the same paper.

The correct answer is B, Lord's. India beat West Indies in the final on 25 June 1983 at Lord's in London, defending a total of 183 and winning by 43 runs; Mohinder Amarnath was named player of the match and Kapil Dev was the captain who received the trophy on the famous balcony.

Option A, The Oval, hosted a semi-final of that tournament, which makes it a plausible distractor. Option C, Old Trafford, is where India beat England in the other semi-final, and it is also the ground most often confused with Lord's in this question. Option D, Edgbaston, staged group matches in 1983 and the 2013 Champions Trophy final, but not the 1983 final. Note the pattern in the paper: the 1983 and 2019 finals were both at Lord's, and the 2011 final was at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

The correct answer is B, 1942 and 1946. The World Cup is played every four years, so after the 1938 tournament in France the next editions would have fallen in 1942 and 1946. Both were cancelled because of the Second World War and its aftermath, and the competition resumed only in 1950 in Brazil, twelve years after the previous one.

Option A is wrong because the 1938 World Cup was in fact held, in France, and won by Italy. Option C is wrong because the 1950 tournament did take place in Brazil, where Uruguay won the decisive match at the Maracana. Option D names 1940 and 1944, which were never World Cup years at all; the four year cycle from 1930 falls on 1934, 1938, 1942 and 1946, so those two years are outside the schedule entirely.

The correct answer is D, Athens. Greece was chosen for the first modern Games because the ancient festival had been held there, and the event took place in 1896, two years after the International Olympic Committee was founded. The Panathenaic Stadium in Athens was restored for the occasion.

Option A, Paris, hosted the second modern Games in 1900, which is also the Games at which India took part for the first time. Option C, St. Louis in the United States, hosted the third Games in 1904. Option B, London, hosted the Games for the first time in 1908 and is remembered as the first city to host them three times. All three are genuine early hosts, which is what makes them good distractors. Fix the sequence Athens, Paris, St. Louis for the first three modern Games and the question becomes easy.

The correct answer is C, the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. It is the inter-state Twenty20 tournament run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India and is named after the batsman who scored the first century by an Indian in a Test abroad. Its results decide much of the selection for Twenty20 sides.

Option A, the Vijay Hazare Trophy, is the inter-state one-day tournament, fifty overs an innings, and is the answer to the same question when it asks about the limited-overs rather than the Twenty20 format. Option B, the Deodhar Trophy, is also a one-day competition, played between selected teams and named after D. B. Deodhar. Option D, the Duleep Trophy, is a first-class tournament. Sort the four by format once and the question becomes routine: first-class Ranji and Duleep, one-day Vijay Hazare and Deodhar, Twenty20 Syed Mushtaq Ali.

The correct answer is B, Appu, an elephant. The ninth Asian Games at New Delhi in 1982 were the first Games organised under the newly formed Olympic Council of Asia, and their elephant mascot became one of the best remembered images in Indian sport.

Option A, Shera the tiger, is the mascot of the 2010 Commonwealth Games at Delhi, and the two are the classic pair that examiners interchange, because both belong to Delhi editions. Options C and D name no mascot of either event and are placed only to test whether the candidate has learnt the names or is guessing from Indian animals. The clean way to hold this is by year: 1982 Asiad gives Appu the elephant, 2010 Commonwealth Games gives Shera the tiger.

The correct answer is C, eleven. A football side takes the field with eleven players, one of whom is the goalkeeper, the only member of the team permitted to handle the ball, and that only within his own penalty area. If a team is reduced to fewer than seven players through dismissals or injuries, the match cannot continue.

Option A, nine, is the size of a baseball side and of a softball team, not of a football team. Option B, ten, is the number of outfield players in football once the goalkeeper is set aside, which makes it the most attractive wrong answer in the set. Option D, twelve, is the number of players in a kabaddi squad on paper and in some other games, but in football a twelfth player on the field is an offence that brings a penalty against the side.

The correct answer is C, Zurich. FIFA has its headquarters at Zurich in Switzerland, from where it administers the World Cup and the world rankings. The body itself was founded in Paris in 1904, and candidates often confuse the city of founding with the city of the present headquarters, which is exactly the trap this question sets.

Option A, Paris, is where FIFA was founded by seven European associations in 1904, but the office moved to Switzerland long ago. Option B, Lausanne, is in Switzerland too and is the seat of the International Olympic Committee and the Court of Arbitration for Sport, not of FIFA. Option D, Geneva, houses the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization and the International Labour Organization among others, but not the world football body.