Question:medium

In each of the following questions, a part of the given sentence has been underlined as this part may have an error. The first option is the same as the underlined part of the given sentence. Choose this option if you think the underlined part has no error. Otherwise, choose the option that rectifies the error in the underlined part of the given sentence.

When you leave out a player who is the best in the country by a mile, the people need to know the real reasons and this is where the attitude of the BCCI is depressing.

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A superlative like "the best" cannot logically be qualified by a margin phrase such as "by a mile". Remove the redundant phrase.
Updated On: Jul 20, 2026
  • Who is the best in the country by a mile
  • Who is the best in the country
  • Who is the best in the country for a mile
  • Who is the best in the country with a mile
  • Who is the best in the country within a mile
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The Correct Option is B

Solution and Explanation

Start by asking what "by a mile" actually contributes to the sentence. In everyday usage this idiom measures the size of a gap between two things being compared, as in "our team won by a mile," meaning the winning margin was huge.

Now look at what it is attached to here: "the best in the country." "Best" already sits at the top of the scale; nothing can be more than best, so there is no gap left to describe. Pairing a superlative with a margin phrase like "by a mile" is redundant, similar to saying "the most unique" or "the tallest by far and away."

Checking the distractors confirms this: swapping "by a mile" for "for a mile," "with a mile," or "within a mile" only replaces one nonsensical distance phrase with another; none of them solve the core redundancy problem, since a superlative simply cannot take this kind of qualifier.

The cleanest fix is to delete the redundant phrase altogether: "...a player who is the best in the country, the people need to know the real reasons..." That is exactly option (b), which is the correct answer.
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Questions Asked in IBSAT exam

Although cynics may like to see the government’s policy for women in terms of the party’s internal power struggles, it will nevertheless be churlish to deny that it represents a pioneering effort aimed at bringing about sweeping social reforms. In its language, scope and strategies, the policy document displays a degree of understanding of women’s needs that is uncommon in government pronouncements. This is due in large part to the participatory process that marked its formulation, seeking the active involvement right from the start of women’s groups, academic institutions and non-government organizations with grass roots experience.
The result is not just a lofty declaration of principles but a blueprint for a practical programme of action. The policy delineates a series of concrete measures to accord women a decision-making role in the political domain and greater control over their economic status. Of especially far-reaching impact are the devolution of control of economic infrastructure to women, notably at the gram panchayat level, and the amendments proposed in the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 to give women coparcenary rights.
 An enlightened aspect of the policy is its recognition that actual change in the status of women cannot be brought about by the mere enactment of socially progressive legislation. Accordingly, it focuses on reorienting development programmes and sensitizing administrations to address specific situations as, for instance, the growing number of households headed by women, which is a consequence of rural-urban migration. The proposal to create an equal-opportunity police force and give women greater control of police stations is an acknowledgement of the biases and callousness displayed by the generally all-male lawenforcement authorities in cases of dowry and domestic violence. While the mere enunciation of such a policy has the salutary effect of sensitizing the administration as a whole, it does not make the task of its implementation any easier. 
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  • IBSAT
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I am the family face; flesh perishes. I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place over oblivion.
So wrote Thomas Hardy in his poem, Heredity, describing direct descent of life from one generation to the next. Indeed, the poem reflects the DNA in our genome. Dr.Drew Endy of MIT quoted this when he described how people at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) bypass nature’s constraint of direct descent. Scientists there have used chemistry and biochemistry to produce the first synthetic genome in the laboratory. They chemically synthesized many fragments of the DNA, encoding the 582,970-units-long genome of a bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. Next, they assembled these fragments in perfect order to generate the genome of the bacterium.
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