'The team ______ more than 300 runs in 20 overs ___________ rains. However, some players needed to improve their batting skills.' Choose the option with the correct sequence of words to fill the blanks.
Show Hint
Check which verb form is a proper finite past-tense verb, then pick the preposition that means "even though".
Step 1: Look at the verb tense clue.
The second sentence says "some players needed to improve their batting skills." The verb "needed" is in the simple past tense. Since both sentences describe the same past match, the first blank must also be a simple past tense verb, so the team "scored" runs, not "score" or "scoring".
Step 2: Rule out the participle forms.
"Score" is the bare infinitive and "scoring" is the present participle. Neither can act as the main verb of a sentence on its own; both need a helping verb such as "did" or "was". Since no helping verb appears in the blank, options that use "score" or "scoring" leave the sentence without a proper verb, so they can be ruled out.
Step 3: Check the meaning of the second blank.
"despite" and "in spite of" both mean "even though it happened", and both can sit directly before a noun like "rains". "instead of" means "in place of", so "scoring runs instead of rains" would not make sense, since rain cannot be replaced by a score. This rules out "instead of".
Step 4: Combine both checks.
Only the pair "scored; despite" gives a grammatically complete past-tense sentence with a preposition that correctly means "even though it rained".
Final Answer:
The correct sequence is "scored; despite", option (C).
