Sports GK Quiz: Origins of Sports and National Games of Countries

The correct answer is B, James Naismith. Naismith, a physical education instructor in Springfield in the United States, devised basketball in 1891 as an indoor game for the winter months, using two peach baskets fixed above the floor; a team plays five players on court. Option A is wrong because William G. Morgan invented volleyball, in 1895, also in the United States, and the two names are deliberately offered together because the games and the years are neighbours. Option C is wrong because Walter Camp is remembered for shaping American football, not basketball. Option D is wrong because Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games, founding the International Olympic Committee in 1894 and seeing the first modern Games held at Athens in 1896; he invented no sport. The safe pair to memorise is Naismith with basketball and 1891, Morgan with volleyball and 1895.

The correct answer is C, 1895. Morgan, working in Holyoke in the United States, designed volleyball as a gentler indoor game than the newly invented basketball, and a team plays six players on court. Option A is wrong because 1885 belongs to no landmark in this topic and is placed only to widen the spread of years. Option B is wrong because 1891 is the year James Naismith invented basketball, four years earlier and in the same part of the United States, which is precisely the confusion the question is built on. Option D is wrong because 1900 is the year the Davis Cup in tennis began, and also the year of the Paris Olympic Games, but it has nothing to do with volleyball. Remember the two inventions as a pair, basketball in 1891 and volleyball in 1895, and these questions become automatic.

The correct answer is B, Bhutan, where archery is the official national sport and village tournaments with song and dance are part of festival life. Option A is wrong because Nepal declared volleyball its national sport in 2017; the traditional game earlier associated with it was dandi biyo. Option C is wrong because Mongolia is linked with the three manly sports of the Naadam festival, wrestling, horse racing and archery together, rather than with archery alone as a declared national sport. Option D is wrong because Myanmar is associated with chinlone, a cane ball game, and no archery declaration. In the Indian neighbourhood the list to hold is Bhutan with archery, Nepal and Sri Lanka with volleyball, Bangladesh with kabaddi and Pakistan with hockey, while India has declared no national game at all.

The correct answer is B, Lacrosse and ice hockey. The National Sports of Canada Act of 1994 names lacrosse as the national summer sport and ice hockey as the national winter sport, which makes Canada one of the few countries whose national games rest on a statute rather than on custom. Option A is wrong because baseball is the popular national pastime of the United States, and although basketball was invented by a Canadian, James Naismith, it is not a declared national sport of Canada. Option C is wrong because it leaves out lacrosse; curling is popular in Canada but is not named in the Act. Option D is wrong for the same reason, and because it drops ice hockey, the winter sport the Act expressly names. The statute is worth remembering by name, because questions often ask for the year 1994.

The correct answer is B, India. The shuttle-and-racket game was played at Poona, now Pune, where British officers took it up; it was long known simply as Poona, and they carried it home where its rules were later settled. Option A is wrong as the country of origin, although England is where the modern rules were codified and where the All England Championships, the oldest tournament in the sport, began; this split between the folk game and the written rules is the heart of the question. Option C is wrong because China, though dominant in the modern sport, is linked in origin questions with cuju, the ancient ball game that prefigures football. Option D is wrong because Scotland is the home of golf. Along with chess, polo and snooker, badminton is one of the four origin answers that go to India.

The correct answer is C, Japan. Jigoro Kano founded judo in 1882 at the Kodokan in Tokyo, building a grappling sport of throws and holds out of the older jujitsu, and judo entered the Olympic programme at the Tokyo Games. Option A is wrong because Korea is the home of taekwondo, a striking art of kicks and punches that is also the national sport there; judo and taekwondo are the commonest pair of distractors in this question. Option B is wrong because China is associated with wushu and the kung fu traditions. Option D is wrong because Thailand is the home of muay thai, Thai boxing. Japan also gives karate, which grew in Okinawa, and sumo, its traditional national sport, so the three Japanese answers are worth keeping together.

The correct answer is B, Argentina, which declared pato its national sport in 1953; the game is played by riders who must carry a handled ball and throw it through a vertical ring. Option A is wrong because Brazil has declared no such national sport, football being simply the game of the country by popular usage and capoeira its best known traditional art. Option C is wrong because Mexico's official national sport is charreria, the contest of horsemanship ridden by charros, which is itself a frequently asked answer and sits next to pato because both are mounted. Option D is wrong because Chile's official national sport is Chilean rodeo, in which two riders work a steer along a padded wall. Learning these three South American answers together, pato for Argentina, charreria for Mexico and rodeo for Chile, settles a whole group of questions.

The correct answer is B, Jabalpur. British officers stationed there are credited with adding coloured balls to the existing game of black pool in 1875, and the new game took the name snooker, then army slang for a first-year cadet. Option A is wrong because Pune, then Poona, is the origin of badminton, which was for years called the game of Poona; the two Indian origin stories are regularly swapped in options. Option C is wrong because Mhow, a cantonment in Madhya Pradesh, has no claim in this topic, and Option D is wrong because Meerut is remembered for the beginning of the revolt of 1857 rather than for any sport. India is thus credited with four origins worth memorising: chess from chaturanga, badminton from Poona, modern polo from Manipur and snooker from Jabalpur.

The correct answer is A, Manipur, where the horseback game sagol kangjei was played and from which British planters and officers took up the modern form; the earliest clubs of the modern game were founded at Silchar and Calcutta. Option B is wrong because Assam, although Silchar lies there and its club is among the oldest in the world, is not the home of the parent game itself, which makes this the most tempting wrong answer in the set. Option C is wrong because Rajasthan has a long and famous polo tradition in its princely states but did not give the game its origin. Option D is wrong because Punjab is associated with kabaddi and with wrestling rather than with the beginnings of polo. A polo team has four players a side, a figure asked in the same breath as the origin.

The correct answer is B, Sri Lanka, which declared volleyball its national sport in 1991. Option A is wrong for the year rather than the game, because Nepal also made volleyball its national sport, but in 2017; where a question gives a year, the year decides between these two countries, and where it does not, the stem usually names the country. Option C is wrong because the Maldives has declared no national sport of this kind, football being the popular game there. Option D is wrong because the national game of Bangladesh is kabaddi, locally called ha-du-du. The wider lesson of this question is that a declaration carries a date, so the national sports worth tying to years are Argentina with pato in 1953, Sri Lanka with volleyball in 1991, Canada by its Act of 1994, Colombia with tejo in 2000 and the Philippines with arnis in 2009.

The correct answer is B, Chaturanga. The name means the four limbs, standing for the four divisions of the ancient army, elephants, chariots, cavalry and infantry, which survive as the bishop, the rook, the knight and the pawn of the modern board. Option A is wrong because pachisi is the old race game played on a cross-shaped cloth, the ancestor of ludo rather than of chess. Option C is wrong because gilli danda is a stick-and-peg street game with no connection to the board. Option D is wrong because kangjei, more fully sagol kangjei, is the Manipuri horseback game from which modern polo grew; it belongs to the polo answer in this same topic. From chaturanga the game travelled to Persia as chatrang and reached Europe through the Arab world, the Persian phrase for a cornered king giving the word checkmate.