"Maybe I could have had an extended run" - Abhinav Mukund on being dropped after the 2011 England Test series
Abhinav Mukund has acknowledged that he felt he could have got an extended run with Team India when he was dropped after the 2011 Test series against England.
Mukund aggregated 64 runs in four innings in the first two Tests of the series and was ignored for the final two games. India went on to lose the series 4-0 and the left-handed opener didn't play a Test for the next six years.
During an interaction with WV Raman on his YouTube channel, Abhinav Mukund was asked whether an extended run would have perhaps helped him, considering he had shaped up well, although his numbers might have disappointed the decision-makers, to which he responded:
"I had a lot of time to think about it afterwards. So I did think that maybe I could have had an extended run because I got 49 in Lord's, I got zero and three in the next Test match and rightfully so I was dropped."
The Tamil Nadu opener pointed out that he had mustered a century in the practice game before the third Test against England but was ignored for the final two games and the subsequent series against Australia and West Indies:
"In between those four Test matches, just before the third Test, there was a tour game, and not a lot of people know that I batted at three and I got a hundred for India vs Northamptonshire. Right after that, we went into the domestic season and I wasn't called up for the tour of Australia or the West Indies series that happened at home."
Mukund stated that he wouldn't lie and that it was definitely disappointing. He added that he could think about how to have approached it better but that he is not going to dwell on it too much because it's in the past.
"I went in with absolutely no match practice" - Abhinav Mukund on his Test debut against the West Indies
Abhinav Mukund was also asked about his Test debut against the West Indies, to which he replied:
"It was a blur actually because I hadn't played any cricket for the previous three or four months. We had finished the season, it happened in June. So what happened really was I went in with absolutely no match practice. I landed there and three days later I was playing a Test match."
The cricketer-turned-commentator highlighted that apart from the lack of match practice heading into the tour, playing against the Dukes ball was another challenge:
"Very different because that was the first time I was facing the Dukes ball as well. Once or twice I had played with the Kookaburra ball in Australia but the Dukes ball was a fairly new thing. I tried to express myself as much as I could and I did get a few runs in a difficult series and then I was called up straightaway to the tour of England."
Abhinav Mukund scored 147 runs at an average of 24.50 in his six innings against the West Indies. He was India's fourth-highest run-getter in that series and had an average better than Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni and Murali Vijay.