At the last Asian Games in 2018, the Indian men's volleyball team finished 12th.
This is what it's done so far in the current Games:
Beating fellow stragglers Cambodia 3-0. Then playing the reigning silver medallists South Korea and beating them 3-2. The reward for that - play the reigning bronze medallists Chinese Taipei. No problem. Another 3-0 win.
3-0, against a team that's ranked 30 places above them in the world. 3-0 against a team that won bronze in 2018. And up next a quarterfinal against the best team on the continent: Japan.
Hopeless? They don't do that here. Even if it would have been understandable if they did.
Long neglected, bullied and held back by administrators who have overseen a steep fall from the glory days of the 1980s, everything they've been experiencing over their careers would have just fed that hopelessness.
There are horror stories around every corner -- When they travelled to the Asian Championships in Japan in 2021, the players had to pay their own way, some of them pawning relatives' jewellery to do so. They were never repaid.
As late as 2018, the 'diet' for state-level players at the National Championships was rice and rasam. In 2022, Kerala's best players had to file a court case to win the right to represent their state in the National Championships after the state federation chose not to pick them because they'd gone and played in the privately-run Prime Volleyball League (they won gold there).
And yet.
A dramatic shift in system over the past couple of years has helped. The Prime Volleyball League has given players a solid platform and the effects are tangible: they are in the best shape they have been in since they last won bronze in 1986. That was a team of stars, including a certain PV Ramanna. Modern sports fans might possibly know him better as the father of PV Sindhu.
Near four decades it's taken, but it appears Indian volleyball is on the rise again. The technical skills of the players weren't in much doubt, but the new-found stability back home has given the players a mental edge.
In that thrilling group stage match against South Korea, they weathered a barrage that would have seen them crumble in the past. A set down, they stood strong to win a marathon second set before putting the squeeze on in the third. A 2-1 lead was soon made 2-2 but they once again flew off the blocks in the final, decisive set. They went up a couple of match points, lost them both, conceded one of their own, saved that and won on their next match point. To do this against any team is remarkable, to do it against a team ranked a whopping 46 places above you...
Even more remarkable is how they went and topped that display against Taipei, a match where -- judging by the progression of scores since there was no live telecast -- they rarely lost control. 25-22, 25-22, 25-21 is about as straightforward as it gets.
The one game of the three that was telecast was the South Korea one, and that showed a glimpse of how everyone in this team pulls for the other. The spiking of Amit, Vinit Kumar, and Ashwal Rai was incessant, Muthusamy's setting impeccable, Manoj Manjunath's and Erin Varghese's blocking clutch.
After their match, Rai would give an interview very different from most. Sports fans are used to displays of happiness and cliched-sounding phrases being thrown about after big wins, but here Rai simply said, "this was the first time that the Indian (NT) volleyball has been shown live on television. Thank you."
"Thank you," for the simple act of showing them on national television. Let that sink in.
And so, this humble bunch of star athletes will now buckle down and prepare for their toughest test yet. It's not just Japan's ranking that makes them so formidable, it's the knowledge that they are hell-bent on correcting a disappointing fifth place from the last edition. South Korea, Chinese Taipei, and now a redemption-seeking Japan? Hopeless.
It's just that the Indian volleyball doesn't do hopeless.