BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 22 of 142

Correct — A, Soccer (Football). Association football is the most widely played and most widely followed field game in the world by every measure a question like this can mean. Take governing bodies first: FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, has 211 member associations — more than the 193 member states of the United Nations, because several territories that are not sovereign states field their own football teams. No other sport's world body comes close to that spread. Take the calendar next: the FIFA World Cup, first held in Uruguay in 1930 and staged every four years since apart from the war years, is the single most-watched sporting event on earth after the Olympic Games, and the Olympics are a multi-sport festival rather than one game. Take participation last: football needs a ball and an open space and nothing else, which is why it took root on every inhabited continent and in economies of every kind, while games needing specialised equipment, prepared surfaces or long playing time did not. The other three options are all genuine international sports with real followings, and each fails for a different reason. Cricket is the strongest challenger by audience because of the size of the South Asian market, but its playing base is narrow; hockey is played seriously in a few dozen countries and is a national tradition in only a handful; and volleyball, whatever its popularity, is in its principal form an indoor court game rather than a field game, which is what the stem asks about. The wording matters here, and reading it carefully is the discipline this question rewards.

• (b)Cricket — The answer an Indian candidate feels rather than reasons, and it confuses intensity with spread. Cricket's global audience is enormous but heavily concentrated in South Asia, and its governing body recognises only about a dozen Full Member nations able to play Test cricket, against FIFA's 211 associations. A sport with the highest viewership in one region is not the most popular in the world.
• (c)Volleyball — Widely played, and taught in schools almost everywhere, but it fails the stem twice over. Its principal international form is an indoor court game, so it is not a field game in the sense the question means, and even counting beach volleyball its following is nowhere near football's. It is on the paper as the option that sounds plausible because so many people have played it.
• (d)Hockey — A genuine field game, and the one with the strongest Indian claim — India has won eight Olympic gold medals in hockey, in 1928, 1932, 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1964 and 1980, a record no country has matched. But field hockey is played seriously in a limited number of countries and its global following is a fraction of football's. National pride is not a measure of world popularity.

Comparisons of sporting popularity rest on three different measures, and they do not always agree, which is why a question of this kind has to be read carefully. The first is the number of national associations affiliated to the world governing body, which measures institutional spread. The second is participation — how many people actually play the game — which favours sports needing little equipment. The third is audience, measured by broadcast viewership and attendance, which favours sports with a big television market. Football leads on all three simultaneously, and that is what makes it the uncontested answer: 211 FIFA member associations, an estimated playing population larger than any other sport's, and a World Cup whose cumulative audience runs into billions. Cricket leads on none of the three globally, but would lead an audience measure taken only in South Asia.

The route through this question is to test each option against the exact phrase in the stem, 'field game ... in the world'. Volleyball fails 'field'. Cricket and hockey fail 'in the world', because both are concentrated — cricket in the Commonwealth and above all in South Asia, hockey in a few dozen nations. Football fails neither, so it is the answer, and a candidate can reach it in fifteen seconds without knowing a single statistic. It is worth remembering that these popularity questions are set precisely because they can be reasoned rather than recalled; a State services paper has no way to test a genuinely contested statistic, so it picks one where the answer is not close. The related caution is not to let the Indian frame decide it. Cricket dominates Indian sports coverage and hockey is India's most decorated Olympic sport, so both feel like plausible world leaders from inside India — and neither is.

• FIFA has 211 member associations, more than the 193 member states of the United Nations, because several non-sovereign territories field their own national football teams.
• The FIFA World Cup was first held in Uruguay in 1930 and has been staged every four years since, apart from 1942 and 1946.
• Cricket's world body recognises about a dozen Full Members entitled to play Test cricket, alongside a much larger group of associate members with limited international status.
• India has won eight Olympic gold medals in field hockey — 1928, 1932, 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1964 and 1980 — the most by any nation in the event.
• Volleyball, invented in 1895 in the United States, is principally an indoor court sport; its outdoor variant, beach volleyball, became a separate Olympic event in 1996.

• Answering from an Indian frame. Cricket dominates Indian coverage and hockey India's Olympic record, and neither is the world's most popular game.
• Ignoring the word 'field' in the stem. Volleyball's main form is an indoor court game, which disqualifies it before popularity is even considered.
• Confusing audience size in one region with global spread. A sport can have the largest single-market viewership and still be played seriously in only a dozen countries.

BPSC asks sport in two registers — a general-knowledge superlative like this one, and hard current affairs naming a specific medal, tournament or Bihar sportsperson from the past year. UPSC has almost abandoned sport in prelims since the syllabus was tightened in 2011; where it survives, it appears as a general-awareness item on a major event rather than as a popularity comparison, so the BPSC candidate has to prepare a year's sporting calendar that a UPSC candidate can skip.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first FIFA World Cup was held in 1930 in which country ?

  • (a)Brazil
  • (b)Italy
  • (c)Uruguay
  • (d)France

  Answer(c) Uruguay — the hosts also won the inaugural tournament. Italy hosted and won in 1934, France hosted in 1938, and Brazil hosted the first post-war edition in 1950.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  India's eight Olympic gold medals in field hockey were won between

  • (a)1920 and 1968
  • (b)1928 and 1980
  • (c)1936 and 1984
  • (d)1948 and 1976

  Answer(b) 1928 and 1980 — six of them consecutively from 1928 to 1956, then Tokyo in 1964 and Moscow in 1980. No other country has won as many golds in the event.