Indian athletes head to Gold Coast for the Commonwealth Games, but they won’t quite hit the gorgeous beaches. Not officially. India has contrived to get the most scenic of the Games’ venues knocked off its menu at the precise time that Beach Volleyball has been introduced in CWG. India’s volleyball federation is currently banned after two men stuffed the sport in a maze of court cases, which means India aren’t fielding a team either in indoor or beach volleyball.

At Gold Coast, apart from Australia, southern hemisphere’s sea-side postcard-perfect Rwanda, New Zealand, South Africa, Mozambique and land-locked Sierra Leone are sending teams, for all the fabulous serving, digging, setting, spiking and blocking action. Even England, harping on its Brighton sunsets, will be at the Southern Gold Coast. Raj Kumar, one of the sport’s veteran players in India and good enough to get a contract in the American league, and his wife Rama Devi, who had all the sass and insouciant air of the sport’s free-spirited practitioners while she represented India, are mildly disgusted. Considering they believed nothing could stop the Indians, when they played. “You see,” says Raj Kumar, “Indian women never wore bikinis when playing the sport. But that didn’t stop her from being very good at it!”

A sport that took off in Hyderabad 25 years ago, beach volleyball sold Rs 500 tickets to a packed stadium on Necklace Road on a day when the former Andhra capital was hosting a one-dayer with Kapil Dev in India ranks and Asian Badminton was happening at Gachibowli. “And Hyderabad didn’t even have a beach,” he says.