Sports Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Pullela Gopichand is the only sportsperson to have received all three major Indian sports honours - the Arjuna Award (1999), the Khel Ratna (2001) and the Dronacharya Award (2009).

He won the All England badminton title in 2001 and then, as a coach, produced Saina Nehwal and P.V. Sindhu.

Answer: A

Soccer and football are two names for the same game. 'Soccer' is a clipping of 'association football', coined in England in the 1880s to distinguish it from rugby football.

The other pairs name genuinely different games: golf and polo, billiards and carrom, volleyball and squash have nothing in common but their surfaces.

Answer: A

Pelé was a Brazilian footballer, the only player to win three World Cups - in 1958, 1962 and 1970.

He scored over 1,000 career goals and was named FIFA's Player of the Century jointly with Diego Maradona.

Answer: B

India's football team first appeared at the Olympics at London in 1948, losing 2–1 to France in the first round.

Several of the Indian players took the field barefoot, which is the detail the match is chiefly remembered for.

Answer: B

Tennis is played with a racket - a strung frame used to strike the ball.

A helmet belongs to cricket or cycling, flippers to swimming, and a basket to basketball. Rackets are also used in badminton and squash, but with quite different frames and strings.

Answer: A

A Grand Slam in tennis means winning all four major championships - the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open - in the same calendar year.

Only five singles players have done it: Don Budge, Rod Laver twice, Maureen Connolly, Margaret Court and Steffi Graf.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Seven

Each kabaddi side has seven players on the mat, with substitutes available off it. A raider who touches opponents and returns across the mid-line puts them out, and they revive one by one as the raider’s team scores.

Answer: A

A baseball team fields nine players: pitcher, catcher, four infielders and three outfielders.

The batting order likewise has nine positions, and a game is of nine innings.

Answer: A

The 9th South Asian Federation Games were held at Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2004.

The Games bring together the eight SAARC countries and were first held at Kathmandu in 1984. India has topped the medal table at every edition.

Answer: D

Virender Sehwag was the first Indian to score a Test triple century, making 309 against Pakistan at Multan in March 2004.

He did it again with 319 against South Africa at Chennai in 2008, becoming one of only four batsmen to score two Test triple hundreds.