SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 13 of 98

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the most appropriate meaning of the given idiom. On the ball

(a)Aware of any changes or developments and quick to react to them
(b)Unaware of any changes or developments and lazy to react to them
(c)Aware of any changes or developments but slow to react to them
(d)Aware of any changes or developments but doing nothing

Answer

Why

Correct — A. On the ball means alert and quick to respond, and it carries both halves at once.

The image behind it is a ball game: the player with an eye on the ball both sees the play and reacts to it in time. Used of a person, it is a compliment about competence.

Option (a) is the wording that keeps the pair together — aware of changes and quick to react to them. Each of the others keeps the awareness and damages the response, or damages both.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Unaware of any changes or developments and lazy to react to them — 'Unaware ... and lazy' negates the idiom in both of its parts. On the ball praises someone for noticing and acting, and this option describes the opposite person.
(c)
Aware of any changes or developments but slow to react to them — The awareness survives here but the speed is thrown away — 'slow to react'. Quickness is the working half of the idiom, so half the meaning is missing.
(d)
Aware of any changes or developments but doing nothing — 'Doing nothing' removes the reaction entirely. Someone who notices a change and acts on none of it is exactly who would not be called on the ball.

Concept

The four options here are not four different meanings. They are one meaning with parts removed, and the parts are awareness and speed of response.

Option (b) removes both, (c) removes the speed, (d) removes the response. Only the keyed wording keeps the pair intact.

That is the fastest way to read a meaning-of-the-idiom item: compare the options against each other, find the component that varies, and ask which version the idiom actually carries.

The idiom is used of people and of organisations — a manager who is on the ball, a department that is not — and it says nothing about whether the person is right, only that they are alert and prompt.

Key facts

On the ball — alert, well informed, and quick to understand or react.
The expression is a compliment and normally describes a person: 'the new supervisor is really on the ball'.
Drop the ball is a separate idiom meaning to fail to do something you were responsible for.

Study next

Ball idioms: drop the ball, the ball is in your court, play ballAlertness idioms: on your toes, keep your eyes peeled, quick off the markReading idiom options by locating the single component that changes across them

Common traps

Settling for the option that keeps the awareness and quietly swaps quick for slow.
Assuming an idiom naming a ball must be about sport itself rather than about alertness.

This shift asks an idiom's meaning here at English Q.13, and asks you to supply the idiom for a blank at English Q.3, keyed 'on the fence'.

The meaning form is also keyed on 09 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.18 ('To have bigger fish to fry') and on 11 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.20 ('Hit the nail on the head').

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.