Tables – merged cells and vertical alignment

Hello,

Is is possible to achieve merging of repeated value in one big cell, vertically centred, but using tables only?

Like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34171805/how-to-merge-cells-in-same-..., second picture of the Petter Friberg's answer.

(I managed to make his first picture, with value in the first row of merged cells ("big cell"), using tables only)

I found this one, but this is with crosstables: https://community.jaspersoft.com//questions/1050351/merge-rows-when-repe....

My conclusion is that it is not possible with tables only, but do you have any suggestion?

If number of rows is odd, I could put it in middle cell somehow, but if number is even, I think it is not possible (like in the first picture, USA is even and India is odd)?

Thanks!