GALLE: “It was a long time ago. I’m 27, he is 28,” quipped Abhinav Mukund, when quizzed about how it felt batting again with Virat Kohli, who was his captain in the India Under-19 team.

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When the left-hander from Tamil Nadu made his Test debut in the same Test as Kohli, against West Indies in Jamaica, in 2011, little did he know that his fate will be completely diverse to that of his captain now.

On that tour, Mukund hit 62 at Roseau. It would prove to be his sole half-century in Test cricket, till he scored 81 against Sri Lanka on Day Three of the first Test at the Galle International Stadium here on Friday.

Later that summer, Mukund made scores of 49,12, 0 & 3 before being replaced by a ‘fit-again’ Virender Sehwag as India endured a nightmare tour to England, where they lost all four Tests. Former England captain Nasser Hussain felt that Mukund deserved a longer run, but no one was listening.

The heavy defeat needed a scapegoat, and Mukund was one of them.

“There was a point of time that I was not raring to even put on whites. I wasn’t part of any team, and I wasn’t part of any first-class team. I was Dropped from my own first-class team,” he confessed on Friday.

The vagaries of the past have made him better equipped to deal with disappointment now. “To have this opportunity to be part of the Indian team is such a huge bonus. I take every game as an opportunity. Whether I’m part of the team or not again, I’ll try to do my best,” he said.

He admits that he had a long time to reflect on where his career was going when he was dropped just one Test after getting 49 at Lord’s on a trip where every batsman other than Rahul Dravid struggled.

“I had a lot of time to think about it. I had six years to think about it. I think you had too. I don’t want to talk about it. I am happy I am back in the squad,” he said. After failing in the first innings, Mukund bounced back superbly on Day Two by brilliantly running out Upul Tharanga and taking a tremendous catch to dismiss Niroshan Dickwella at silly point.

The 27-year-old’s urge to excel as a specialist close-in fielder was ignited after he dropped a sitter off Steve Smith in Pune earlier this year. The mistake cost India heavily as Smith went on to score a hundred and the hosts lost the Test.

“I felt really bad. Once you drop a catch, it is not like you can go back and do something. It wasn’t a difficult chance either. It haunted me for a couple of days. I knew my opportunity would come where I could take something, I could prove that I was a good fielder at that position. Thankfully it came,” he said.

“I wanted to be a specialist somewhere, since that’s important in the Indian team,” Mukund said, before crediting India’s fielding coach R Sridhar and trainer Shankar Basu for his acrobatic fielding efforts.