My Ball's Better than Your Ball Quiz

Answer: Tom Brady

Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. played quarterback for the New England Patriots for 20 seasons, from 2000 through 2019, before signing to play with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. With New England, he played in nine Super Bowls, leading the team to victory on six occasions. He was declared the Most Valuable Player of the Super Bowl four times, the first player to achieve that. Due to the longevity of his career, he set a number of records as the first player to reach certain goals: 20 seasons with a single team, 200 regular season wins, 17 division titles as quarterback, and many more.

The game most Americans simply call football, because it is by far the dominant code in that country, is named American football or gridiron in other countries which have other codes played in their local competitions. The term gridiron refers to the field on which it is played, a rectangle 120 yards by 53 1/3 yards with crosswise lines marked every 10 yards. The goal lines are marked 10 yards in from each end, and have goalposts located in their centre. As is the case for most football codes, the aim of each team is to move the ball past the opposition to score, either by being in control of the ball while in the end zone, or by kicking the ball through the upright portion of the goalpost, above the crossbar.

The American football is an oblate spheroid, but with more pointed ends than is common in other football codes. With a length of about 11 inches and a short circumference of about 21 inches, the 14-oz ball is also slightly smaller than most. (Since this is an American sport, rather than an international one, non-metric units have been used in the descriptions.)

Answer: Pelé

Edson Arantes do Nascimento first played for the Brazilian national team at the age of 16, and went on to become a legend of the game, named (among other honors) World Player of the Century by the IFFHS, joint Player of the Century (with Diego Maradona) by the FIFA, and Athlete of the Century by the IOC. Averaging almost a goal a game over his career (1953-1977), he was part of a team that won the World Cup three times: 1958, 1962 and 1970.

Purists would argue that this is the only football code that merits the name, as players (aside from the goalie while in the goal square) are not allowed to use their hands to move the ball, and rely instead primarily on their feet, with the occasional head thrown into the mix. With only a single point scored when the ball is sent into the net behind the goal, soccer scores tend to be much lower than is the case for other football codes, and draws are quite common. When a match must have a winner, it is decided first by overtime, then by penalty shootouts in which several players from each team try to beat the opposition goalie.

A soccer ball is a sphere with a circumference of 68-70 cm, which is now commonly covered by a network of 20 white hexagons and 12 black pentagons, forming a shape known to mathematicians as a truncated icosahedron. (This means that you could make the shape by cutting the corners off the 20-sided solid called an icosahedron.)

Answer: Babe Ruth

George Herman Ruth was one of the most talented baseball players of all time. He started his career (with Boston) as a pitcher, and a very good one, but his batting prowess was such that it seemed wasteful to have him only available for every three or four games, and he was switched to playing left field after his controversial trace to the Yankees. As someone who grew up in Massachusetts, I prefer to pass over the details of the Curse of the Bambino - suffice it to say that the Red Sox did eventually win another World Series, after the Yankees were the dominant team of most of the 20th century.

Baseball is an American game, similar to a number of others whose central feature is one player projecting a ball towards another, who attempts to hit the ball and run around like a maniac to score. (I say this as a dedicated fan of these sports!) Baseball uses the term pitcher and batter to describe the two players who front up, and the running is done around a square, called a diamond, with bases at each corner that must be touched by a player who is progressing towards a score when he makes it back to the starting point, called home plate. It's a lot more complicated than that, but this is a short quiz.

A baseball is about 9 inches in circumference, and weighs about 5 ounces. It is covered in white leather, usually in the form of two peanut-shaped pieces connected by red stitching. This stitching plays an important role in allowing the pitcher to deliver balls that surprise the batter by their movement through the air.

Answer: Michael Jordan

The NBA biography of Michael Jordan on their official website says it all: "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time." He is certainly one of the best-marketed players, and a name familiar to non-sports fans through such products as Nike's Air Jordan shoes - when every kid has to have a pair, they know the name, even if they have no appreciation of the performances that made him so famous. Jordan won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls, in 1991-1993, and (following a brief retirement to try his hand at professional baseball) in 1996-1998.

Basketball was famously invented by a Canadian living in the United States, looking for an active indoor game. It has evolved significantly since 1891, and is played around the world. Teams of five players attempt to move a ball by bouncing it as they run or passing it to another player until one of them is close enough to the scoring end for their team to throw the ball through the metal ring and score a point. As is the case for most of my descriptions, this is very simplistic, but I hope you get the idea.

Men and women use different sizes of basketball, with the women's ball slightly smaller. An official men's basketball is a sphere with a circumference of 29.5 inches, and a weight of 20 ounces.

Answer: Natalie Cook

Natalie Cook partnered Kerri Pottharst to win a bronze medal at the 1996 Olympic Games, the first time the event was part of that competition. They went on to win gold in Sydney in 2000. Following Kerri Pottharst's retirement, Natalie Cook participated in three more Olympic Games with three different partners, with her best result being fifth place in 2008 with Tamsin Barnett.

Beach volleyball, as the name suggests, had its origins as an adaptation of indoor volleyball to be played on the beach. While many people claim to have set up a net and played the game, the first permanent courts and formal competition were in Santa Monica (California) during the 1920s. The modern game has two players to a team, on a sand court (but often in a stadium, not on an actual beach) which measures 16 m by 8 m, with a 3-metre clearance on all sides.

While informal games can be played with any lightweight ball such as might be found on the beach, a competition ball is 66-68 cm in diameter, and must have a waterproof covering as would be suitable for a beach environment.

Answer: Sachin Tendulkar

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is widely recognised as one of the greatest batsmen to have played the game of cricket. He has been nicknamed the Master Blaster to describe his batting prowess, and also the Little Master, in reference to his diminutive stature. He debuted for India at the age of 16, and represented his country between 1989 and 2013 in all three forms of the game - 200 Tests, 463 One Day International matches, and a single T20 match.

Cricket is another ball-on-bat sport, in which a bowler delivers a ball that (usually) bounces before reaching the batsman, who attempts to hit it so as to score runs. Or at least keep it from hitting the structure in front of which he stands, called a wicket, and causing one of the small pieces of wood called a bail to fall to the ground. Runs are scored by having the batsman and his partner trade places by running to opposite ends of the playing area called the pitch. Or, if a ball is hit so that it leaves the field of play, they may score runs without having to run - six runs if it clears the boundary without touching the ground, four runs if it hits the ground before the boundary.

A cricket ball is roughly the same size as a baseball (225 cm in circumference, 160 g in weight) and is covered in leather - four pieces of leather joined into two hemispheres which are then stitched together so that the dividing lines in the hemispheres are at right angles to each other. As in baseball, this stitching is critically involved in allowing the bowler to deceive the batsman as to what is going to happen to the ball after it is delivered.

Answer: Tiger Woods

Eldrick Tont Woods is the most recent of the golf players who would usually be included in a list of the top ten golfers of all time. After turning professional in 1996 (at the age of 20), he made his mark quickly, winning three PGA championships, including the 1997 Masters, within his first year. He was the number one player in the world within that first year of competition. He held that ranking for most of the first decade of the 21st century: from August 1999 through September 2004, and again from June 2005 through October of 2010, a total of 545 weeks.

Golf was (in)famously described by Mark Twain as "a good walk spoiled". Often played in beautiful locations, it involves hitting a small ball from the designated starting point (tee) to the finishing point (hole) over a series of designated areas. A full course is considered to have 18 holes (with the clubhouse where refreshments are taken after the game often called the 19th hole).

A golf ball is the smallest one in this quiz, with a minimum diameter of 1.680 inches (42.67 mm) and a maximum weight of 1.620 oz (45.93 g). A modern golf ball has a dimpled surface, to improve the aerodynamics of its flight.

Answer: Margarita Mamun

Russian gymnast Rita Mamun was nicknamed the Bengali tigress, a reference both to her Bangladeshi mother and to her competitive spirit. She dominated international rhythmic gymnastics competitions between 2013 and 2016, ranking first or second in each year, and winning gold at the 2016 Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro.

In rhythmic gymnastics, competitors perform movements which involve a combination of the flexibility and strength associated with gymnastics and the graceful performance skills of a dancer. Competitors at the Olympic Games perform four routines, each involving a different piece of equipment: hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon. (Another possible apparatus is the rope - for each competition, four of the five are nominated.)

The ball must be too large to be held in the hand, but not large enough to be balanced with the aid of the wrist; they are usually 18 to 20 cm in diameter, and must have a minimum weight of 400g.

Answer: Jonny Wilkinson

Jonathan Peter Wilkinson played for the Newcastle Falcons for 12 years, before moving to Toulon, where he competed for another five seasons. He represented both England and the British and Irish Lions in international competitions, and is best remembered for scoring the winning goal of the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final, in the last minute of extra time, breaking the hearts of all the Australian fans who had packed the stadium in Sydney.

Rugby union is one of the two main types of rugby, the other being rugby league. Since they both originated in the same 19th century game, they are very similar games - but don't say that to a dedicated fan of one of them! Most commonly, rugby union is played with 15 players on a side (but shorter forms with fewer players are increasingly popular), with players attempting to move the ball past the opposition and score by placing it in a designated scoring zone at the end of the field. Touching the ball to the ground is called a try, and is worth more points than a goal, which is scored by kicking the ball above the crossbar of the H-shaped goalposts.

Rugby uses a ball which is described as an oblate spheroid 280-200 mm long, with a long circumference of 740-770 mm and a short circumference of 580-620 mm. This makes it slightly larger, and distinctly less pointy, than an American gridiron football.

Answer: Rod Laver

Younger tennis fans who only see an elderly gentleman turning up to much acclaim at the Grand Slam tournaments may not fully appreciate the extent to which Rod Laver excelled in the sport. He won a Grand Slam in 1962, then turned professional, and could not compete again in those tournaments until the advent of open tennis in 1968. In 1969 he won a second Grand Slam, the only player to achieve this by the end of the 20th century. While he could not compete in amateur tennis, he was the top-ranked professional competitor from 1964 through 1970. In 2000, an Associated Press poll named him the Player of the Century.

Tennis is a racquet sport, in which players try to hit the ball back and forth across a net landing inside a designated area called the court, each player trying to make it impossible for the opponent to return the ball again. (It can be played as doubles, too, with two players on each side of the net.) It is played on a number of different surfaces, each of which offers an advantage to different styles of play.

The diameter of a tennis ball is between 6.54 and 6.86 cm, and its mass must be between 56.0 and 59.4 g. It is a hollow rubber sphere covered by a felted material, usually white or yellow, although that is not a requirement of the sport. Like a baseball, there are two peanut-shaped pieces that fit together, but in a tennis ball they are not stitched (since the covering is glued in place), but connected by a white area with no felt.