Questions

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

India’s title triumph in the Under-19 cricket World Cup at the Bay Oval in New Zealand seemed inevitable. Prithvi Shaw’s boys, astutely coached by Rahul Dravid, maintained an unbeaten record through their three-week sojourn. The rousing campaign commenced with a 100-run win against Australia on January 14; in subsequent games, Papua New Guinea, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Pakistan were all emphatically defeated. There were no big-game nerves and even in the much- hyped semifinal against Pakistan, India pocketed a facile 203-run victory. In the summit clash against Australia, Shaw’s boys followed their template of dominance.

Australia was bowled out for 216 and India cruised home in 38.5 overs with eight wickets to spare, and enjoyed the added lustre of opener Manjot Kalra’s unbeaten 101. Through the tournament India found diverse heroes. Fittingly, its batting troika of Shaw, Kalra and Shubman Gill, along with seamer Kamlesh Nagarkoti and spinner Anukul Roy, found a berth in the International Cricket Council’s Under-19 World Cup team, essentially a tribute to the best players on view in the championship. Cricketing excellence allied with the resultant celebrity status, especially during the teenage years, can be a double-edged sword and it helped that in the dressing room there was the calming presence of Dravid. As the ecstatic players leapt and photo-bombed after clinching the trophy, Dravid cut through the hype and said that this win should not be the team’s defining memory as each individual cricketer has much more to achieve in his career. Dravid has a point. India has won the Under-19 World Cup on four occasions, including the previous golden runs in 2000, 2008 and 2012. From among these champion sides, only a few graduated to the big stage. Yuvraj Singh and Virat Kohli came through the under-19 ranks and managed to carve a niche for themselves, but Unmukt Chand, who led the team to the Cup in 2012, and then featured in a soft drink advertisement besides writing a book, has been unable to make it to the Indian senior team.

Who was the captain of the U-19 Cricket team of India who won the 2012 World Cup?

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase

to cry wolf

A sentence has been given in Direct/Indirect Speech. Out of the four given alternatives, select the one which best expresses the same sentence inIndirect/Direct Speech.

“Stop!” shouted the Inspector to his men.

In the following question, out of the given four alternatives, select the one which best expresses the meaning of the given word.

Hackneyed

Read the following passage carefully and choose the most appropriate answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

In short, to write a good letter you must approach the job in the lightest and most casual way. You must be personal, not abstract. You must not say, 'This is too small a thing to put down'. You must say, 'This is just the sort of small thing we talk about at home. If I tell them this they will see me, as it were they'll hear my voice, they'll know what I'm talking about'. That is the purpose of a letter. Carlyle had the trick to perfection. He is writing from Scotsbrig to his brother Alec in Canada and he begins talking about his mother. Good old Mother, he says, 'she is even now sitting at my back, trying at another table to write you a small word with her own hand; the first time she has tried such a thing for a year past. It is Saturday night, after dark; we are in the east room in a hard, dry evening with a bright fire to our two selves; Jenny and her Barns are 'scouring up things' in the other end of the house; and below stairs the winter operations of the farm go on, in a subdued tone; you can conceive the scene! How simple it is and yet how perfect. Can not you see Alec reading it in his far-off home and his eyes moistening at the picture of his old mother sitting and writing her last message to him on earth?

Abstract' in the passage means

A passage is given with five questions following it. Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

The saddest part of life lies not in the act of dying, but in failing to truly live while we are alive. Too many of us play small with our lives, never letting the fullness of our humanity see the light of day. I’ve learned that what really counts in life, in the end, is not how many toys we have collected or how much money we’ve accumulated, but how many of our talents we have liberated and used for a purpose that adds value to this world. What truly matters most are the lives we have touched and the legacy that we have left. Tolstoy put it so well when he wrote: “We live for ourselves only when we live for others.” It took me forty years to discover this simple point of wisdom.

Forty long years to discover that success cannot really be pursued. Success ensues and flows into your life as the unintended yet inevitable byproduct of a life spent enriching the lives of other people. When you shift your daily focus from a compulsion to survive towards a lifelong commitment to serve, your existence cannot help but explode into success. I still can’t believe that I had to wait until the “half-time” of my life to figure out that true fulfillment as a human being comes not from achieving those grand gestures that put us on the front pages of the newspapers and business magazines, but instead from those basic and incremental acts of decency that each one of us has the privilege to practice each and every day if we simply make the choice to do so.

Mother Teresa, a great leader of human hearts if ever there was one, said it best: “There are no great acts, only small acts done with great love.” I learned this the hard way in my life. Until recently, I had been so busy striving, I had missed out on living. I was so busy chasing life’s big pleasures that I had missed out on the little ones, those micro joys that weave themselves in and out of our lives on a daily basis but often go unnoticed. My days were overscheduled, my mind was overworked and my spirit was underfed.

According to the passage, what does ''failing to truly live while we are alive means.''?

Which one among the following stars is nearest to the earth?

If an object is placed at the center of curvature of a concave mirror, then the image formed will be