231 for 5. 238 for 7. 271 for 5. Those were India's totals the last three times they batted first in T20Is in the lead-up to this T20 World Cup.
Their last three chases included two awe-inspiring displays of power: a target of 209 gunned down with 28 balls remaining, then 154 with 60 balls remaining.
All these games came against top-drawer oppositions in South Africa and New Zealand.
Coming into this tournament, India's batters were putting down the scariest of markers. The 4-1 win over New Zealand - the one defeat came when injury and experimentation left them with a line-up severely lacking depth - was particularly scary: India scored at above 12 an over across that series.
India's form in the lead-up to this World Cup seemed to contain two self-evident truths: run-scoring in this format was accelerating at an unprecedented rate, and India were leading the charge.
It seems silly and even disrespectful in hindsight, but there was a reason why everyone, including this website, predicted 300 being breached at this tournament.
In hindsight, we should have all seen it coming - the it here being the old-school nature of the contests at this World Cup. It's always been the case, as we told you ourselves, even before the tournament began. Successful chases of 200-plus targets might induce yawns in franchise leagues and bilateral T20Is, but there have only been two in the history of the T20 World Cup. And none so far in this edition. ICC pitches are different.
We should have seen it coming.
But should we have seen this coming -- the sustained struggle of India's top order at this tournament, culminating in the Seismic Sunday collapse to South Africa in Ahmedabad?
Faf du Plessis and Varun Aaron on how South Africa got their bowling plans spot on
And whether we on the outside saw it or not, should India have seen it coming? Not their batters' struggle, necessarily, but the conditions that could make it a possibility? Should India have known they were walking into a tournament where their status as hosts would not extend to the pitches they played on? And that history suggested these pitches might not be outright hit-through-the-line roads?
And should they, therefore, have played on a greater variety of surfaces leading up to the tournament and ensured they were as prepared as possible?
Two things suggest that they've been taken by surprise by these World Cup pitches.
One was Hardik Pandya's admission after the match against Namibia that India would "like a little more flatter wickets". The other is the stubbornly one-note way they've approached the starts of their innings.
Now this approach is not just admirable but close to non-negotiable in the bulk of T20 cricket played around the world. Particularly on the types of pitches India typically play their home games on, which start off flat and keep getting better to bat on once dew sets in. If you bat first in these conditions, it's imperative that you aim for well above par.
Sunday, however, was not that kind of game. India were chasing. They were chasing 188. They were starting their innings against a match-up that had been widely discussed in the lead-up to the match: the offspin of Aiden Markram against the left-left opening pair of Ishan Kishan and Abhishek Sharma. Offspin had troubled India's top order right through this tournament, and if there was one innings where they could afford to see out one over of this type of bowling and put the ball back in the opposition's court, so to speak, this was it.
What we got, instead, was a four-ball duck of severe antsiness from Kishan, who holed out to a sliced slog one ball after nearly mis-hitting a catch to mid-on. It was the sort of innings you might expect in a 220 chase.
Abhishek, who came into this game on the back of three successive ducks, played a similarly brief and antsy innings. His second, third and fourth balls were big swings and misses against Kagiso Rabada, and he was eventually out having played seven false shots in 12 balls.
And between the wickets of the two openers, India also lost Tilak Varma, the other left-hander in their top three, out second ball, charging Marco Jansen's first ball of the match.
For years and years, India's T20 approach had seemed a step behind the format's evolution, with their batters over-prioritising control at the expense of maximising outcomes. In this match, India seemed to be in the grip of the opposite problem.
South Africa eventually bowled India out for 111, putting in what felt like the tournament's best collective bowling display. But as well as they bowled, they also benefited from the chain reaction India's top three set off.
There may have been one mitigating factor for India's top-order display. The batters may have felt this was a tricky pitch for hitting big shots against the older ball and spread-out fields, and felt it essential to maximise the powerplay. And it may have been one of those days when none of their early risks came off.
But it's happened time and again at this World Cup. This was the third match in a row where India had lost one of their openers to an offspinner in the first over of their innings.
"I think it's literally been zero or a couple of runs for one, every time," India assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said in his post-match press conference. "[It's] obviously putting pressure on the link players. Tilak and [Suryakumar Yadav], their role is to link up with the guys at the back end, and it hasn't gone that way.
"Look, there's a lot of experience in the team and you want a settled team. These guys have done it all before. They're all fantastic players. So do you stick with or twist? Do you stick with the guys who we feel have performed really well over the last 18 months, and who are maybe shy of a few runs now?
"Or do we twist and bring in Sanju [Samson], who's also a fantastic player and obviously helps tactically with having a right-hander at the top of the order? I'm sure that'll be a talking point over the next few days going into these two very important games."
Faf du Plessis and Varun Aaron on the big questions post India's record loss
Of the many things that may have frustrated India about Sunday's defeat, one may have been the sense that their batters simply didn't give themselves a chance. Particularly because this was the kind of chase that should have allowed them to pick their targets selectively.
As it happened, a number of South Africa's bowlers didn't come under real pressure. By the time the left-arm fingerspinner Keshav Maharaj came on, for instance, India had already lost two of their best left-handed spin hitters in Kishan and Abhishek.
It felt oddly appropriate that Washington Sundar walked in at the fall of the third wicket. This was the perfect situation for Axar Patel, who has plenty of experience in this sort of firefighting role. But India had picked Washington ahead of Axar for his offspin match-up against South Africa's left-hand batters. It was a fair tactical call, but it hadn't worked out for India, partly because their own batters hadn't shown the same degree of care for match-ups.
And it might be harsh to blame the batters, because this wasn't the kind of game they had spent most of the last two years preparing for. In home series after home series, they had played on pitches where 200 was a 50-50 total, where all kinds of bowling were fodder for hitting through the line, where the concept of match-ups almost didn't exist.
India have built a line-up primed to dominate one kind of contest and found themselves less than fully prepared for the contests this World Cup has thrown up. They now stare at two must-win games, knowing that simply winning them may not be enough. They remain the hosts of this tournament, but they aren't feeling at home at all.