Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.
I have good memories of St Cyprian's, among a horde of bad ones. Sometimes on summer afternoons there were wonderful expeditions across the Downs to a village called Birling Gap, or to Beachy Head, where one bathed dangerously among the boulders and came home covered with cuts. And there were still more wonderful midsummer evenings when, as a special treat, we were not driven off to bed as usual but allowed to wander about the grounds in the long twilight, ending up with a plunge into the swimming bath at about nine o'clock. There was the joy of waking early on summer mornings and getting in an hour's undisturbed reading in the sunlit, sleeping dormitory. There was also cricket, which I was no good at but with which I conducted a sort of hopeless love affair up to the age of about eighteen. And there was the pleasure of keeping caterpillars, which could be illicitly purchased for sixpence at a shop in the town, and, when one could escape long enough from the master who was ‘taking the walk’, there was the excitement of dredging the dew-ponds on the Downs for enormous newts with orange-coloured bellies. This business of being out for a walk, coming across something of fascinating interest and then being dragged away from it by a yell from the master, like a dog jerked onwards by the leash, is an important feature of school life, and helps to build up the conviction, so strong in many children, that the things you most want to do are always unattainable.
Why does the writer call his liking for cricket “a sort of hopeless love affair”?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → He kept loving the game even though he was never good at it
The writer says cricket was a game “which I was no good at”.
- Still, he loved it “up to the age of about eighteen”.
- A hopeless love affair is a love that has no hope of success.
- He loved the game, but he could never play it well. So his love for it kept going without any success.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: He loved watching the game but was never allowed to play it — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage does not say he was stopped from playing. It says he was no good at it.
Option 2: He played it well but was never picked for the school team — Incorrect. Contradicted: He did not play well. He says he was “no good at” cricket.
Option 4: He was good at it, but the masters made him give it up — Incorrect. Contradicted: He says he was “no good at” it.