After last week's draw for the 2011 AFC Asian Cup pitted soccer minnows India against the region's top-ranked side, Australia, memories flooded back to the most recent meeting between the two countries - an embarrassing 7-1 thrashing. And also to their last encounter in a major tournament, which saw a similarly one-sided result: 4-2.
The winners on both occasions? India, and they did it playing on Australian soil.
The year was 1956 when India's 62-year-old coach, Bob Houghton, was still in short trousers in Croydon, south London. India had been an independent nation for only nine years, but at the Melbourne Olympics its football team accounted for the home country on the way to a fourth-place finish. Less than two weeks later, the Indians trounced the Aussies by six goals in a friendly in Sydney.
At the Melbourne Games, striker Neville D'Souza became the first Asian to score a hat-trick in the Olympics as India swept aside Australia and then gave his nation an unlikely lead in the semi-final against silver medallists Yugoslavia before the Europeans restored order in a 4-1 victory.
India's tough group C at the 2011 AFC Asian Cup in Doha also features another regional powerhouse, South Korea, twice champions. But in their last encounter in the Asian Cup - albeit in 1964 - the Indians prevailed 2-0 on the way to a runners-up finish behind hosts, Israel.
'Half a century ago, India were the best team in Asia,' Delhi-based football historian Novy Kapadia said. 'But today Indian football has stagnated and Australia and South Korea have improved rapidly. From being number one in 1956, today we are ranked about 20th in Asia.'