Nirupama Sanjeev is a famous ______ player of India?

Correct — C. Nirupama Sanjeev, who competed earlier under her maiden name Nirupama Vaidyanathan, is an Indian tennis player.

Her landmark is the 1998 Australian Open, where she became the first Indian woman to win a main-draw singles match at a Grand Slam. She also represented India in the Fed Cup.

That single first is why the name is asked at all — option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  chess — Chess is not her discipline. The Indian chess names of that generation are Viswanathan Anand and Koneru Humpy, and she has no chess record at all.
• (b)
  badminton — Badminton carries a separate set of Indian names, PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal among them. Sindhu is keyed to the Singapore Open 2022 later in this section, at Q.17.
• (d)
  swimming — Swimming appears nowhere in her record. Her national appearances were on court, in Fed Cup ties and Grand Slam draws, not in a pool.

Who-plays-what items are pure recall, and the only defence is a list of Indian sportspeople sorted by discipline.

Women's tennis gives you a short, memorable set: Nirupama Sanjeev for the 1998 Grand Slam first, and Sania Mirza for the doubles majors and the world number one doubles ranking that followed.

Store each name against the one achievement it gets asked for. That achievement is almost always a first, a title or a ranking.

Key facts

• Nirupama Sanjeev, then Nirupama Vaidyanathan, was the first Indian woman to win a main-draw singles match at a Grand Slam, at the 1998 Australian Open.
• She represented India in the Fed Cup.
• Sania Mirza later became world number one in women's doubles.

Common traps

• Guessing from the shape of the name, which carries no clue to the discipline.
• Treating Sania Mirza as the only Indian woman tennis name and rejecting an unfamiliar one as a non-tennis player.

No directly related past PYQ was found.