NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 87 of 150

Correct — A, Sun Yu of China. Saina Nehwal beat Sun Yu in the women's singles final of the 2016 Australian Open Superseries, coming back from a game down to win 11-21, 21-14, 21-19. It was the last Superseries title of her career to that point and came only weeks before the Rio Olympics, which is why it was fresh news when this paper was set in September 2016.

• (b)Carolina Marin — The Spaniard is the most plausible wrong name, because she and Saina had met in two of the biggest finals of the preceding year — the 2015 All England final and the 2015 World Championships final — and Marin won both. She was not Saina's opponent in Sydney in 2016, and she went on to win Olympic gold at Rio that August.
• (c)Wang Yihan — A former world champion and world number one from China, and a long-standing rival of Saina's, but not the 2016 Australian Open finalist. She took silver at the London 2012 Olympics, the Games at which Saina won bronze.
• (d)Sung Ji Hyun — The Korean was a fixture in the world top ten through this period and a frequent opponent on the Superseries circuit, but she did not reach this final. Her presence is simply there to make the list of names all genuinely current.

The BWF Superseries was badminton's top-tier circuit between 2007 and 2017, sitting above the Grand Prix events and below only the World Championships and the Olympics. The Australian Open was one of its stops. As of the September 2016 exam, Saina Nehwal was India's most decorated woman shuttler — Olympic bronze at London 2012, the first Indian woman to reach world number one in April 2015, a World Championships silver in 2015, Padma Shri in 2010 and Padma Bhushan in 2016.

Current-affairs items of this type reward a candidate who has read the sports pages rather than one who reasons, so the practical skill is to build a short mental list of who won what in the twelve months before the exam. Two present-day corrections matter for anyone reading this paper now. First, the Superseries structure named in the question no longer exists: the BWF reorganised its circuit from 2018 into the BWF World Tour, with events graded from Super 100 up to Super 1000, so the Australian Open is now a World Tour event and the phrase Super Series has passed out of use. Second, the badminton landscape of 2016 has moved on entirely — Carolina Marin won Olympic gold at Rio a few weeks after this final, P. V. Sindhu took silver there and went on to become world champion in 2019, and the Indian women's game since then is told largely through Sindhu's record rather than Saina's.

• Saina Nehwal beat Sun Yu of China 11-21, 21-14, 21-19 in the 2016 Australian Open Superseries women's singles final.
• Saina won Olympic bronze at London 2012 and became the first Indian woman to top the world rankings on 2 April 2015.
• She received the Padma Shri in 2010 and the Padma Bhushan in 2016.
• The BWF Superseries circuit ran from 2007 to 2017 and was replaced by the BWF World Tour from 2018.

• Marking the most famous rival rather than the actual finalist — Carolina Marin beat Saina in two 2015 finals, but not this one.
• Reading an eight-year-old sports item as current; both the circuit's name and the rankings in it have changed since 2016.

NDA asks one or two sports items per paper, almost always about a title won in the twelve months before the exam, and it fills the wrong options with real players of the same era rather than invented names.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who was the first Indian woman shuttler to reach the world number one ranking in badminton?

  • (a)P. V. Sindhu
  • (b)Saina Nehwal
  • (c)Jwala Gutta
  • (d)Aparna Popat

  Answer(b) Saina Nehwal — she topped the BWF world rankings on 2 April 2015.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The BWF Superseries circuit was replaced from 2018 by which competition structure?

  • (a)BWF Grand Prix Gold
  • (b)BWF World Tour
  • (c)BWF Premier League
  • (d)BWF Masters Series

  Answer(b) BWF World Tour — its events are graded from Super 100 up to Super 1000.