Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
My grandmother has followed cricket for sixty years, and last month she sat beside me through a BGMI final. On screen, four young men in matching jerseys hunched over their phones, headsets on, faces lit blue. The commentator was nearly hoarse. When a squad from a small town in Assam survived to the end, she clapped. Then she asked me whether this was really a sport.
The usual objection is that nobody sweats. I find this less convincing than it sounds. Shooting is an Olympic event, and the Olympic movement recognises chess, yet neither asks much of the lungs. They test steadiness and judgement. What a good BGMI squad trains is of the same kind: reflexes, the memory of every ridge on a map, and the harder skill of four people deciding in half a second whether to fight or slip away. Teams keep fixed practice hours and employ coaches, and a player whose form dips is dropped, as in any cricket side.
Yet there is one difference I cannot argue away. No one owns football. Boys in a village can mark goalposts with two slippers and play by the same rules as the World Cup. BGMI belongs to a company. It can redraw the map or weaken a favourite weapon in a single update. The company decides who may hold a tournament, and no event goes ahead without its sanction. Indian players learnt how fragile this is in 2022, when the game was blocked for months.
So my answer to my grandmother was a cautious yes. The players, I said, are athletes in every way that matters: discipline, nerve, teamwork. The game itself is still a product. She nodded, though I suspect she mostly wanted the remote back for the evening match.
According to the passage, why does the writer find the objection that ‘nobody sweats’ less convincing than it sounds?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Some games already accepted as sports test steadiness and judgement rather than stamina.
The writer answers the objection with two examples from accepted sports.
- Shooting is an Olympic event, and chess is recognised by the Olympic movement. Yet “neither asks much of the lungs”. This means they need little stamina, the strength to keep up hard physical effort.
- Instead, “They test steadiness and judgement.” BGMI tests skills of the same kind. So sweat cannot be the test of a sport.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Top BGMI players also train their bodies for stamina, much as cricketers do. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage compares BGMI with cricket only in dropping players whose form dips. It never says gamers train for stamina.
Option 2: Physical effort has come to matter less in sport than it did in the past. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The writer does not compare sport today with sport in the past.
Option 3: Gamers do sweat under pressure, even though viewers cannot see it on the screen. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The writer does not say that gamers sweat. The point is that sweat is not needed to make a sport.