Stats: Indian batsmen who missed most Tests between two appearances

It has been a dream come true for left-handed batsman Abhinav Mukund as he made his way back into the Indian starting lineup after six years of enormous hard work and limitless struggle. The 27-year-old made his Test debut with skipper Virat Kohli in 2011 against the West Indies when he was called into the team to replace an injured Virender Sehwag. However, he fell victim to luck unlike Kohli and did not feature in any of the 5 Test matches in that series.

The Tamil Nadu batsman has 5 national team caps under his name where he failed to announce himself as an opener by scoring a mere 210 runs from 10 innings with an average of 21.10. His career went absolutely downhill since then as he injured himself while players like Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay and KL Rahul cemented their positions as top choices to start the Indian line up in the longer format of the game.

After falling short of making it to the team in 56 Test matches Mukund finally got another chance to prove himself in the middle of his career, thanks to an injury again. He was handed over the opportunity to start the Indian batting taking over from Murali Vijay who had been ruled out due to an injury.

His selection into the Test squad was a result of his tremendous performance in the Ranji Trophy in the 2016-17 season. He scored a mammoth 849 runs which defined his thrilling form in the first-class division. He went past the half century mark more than 7 times in 14 innings while converting them into centuries 4 times which includes a ton in the semi-final match against Mumbai.

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Unfortunately enough, this time also his was unable to start off his innings with a bang as he fell prey to the devastating Mitchell Starc scoring a duck in the first innings.

As a matter of fact, Abhinav Mukund is not the only Indian player who missed several Tests before making a dream comeback. The other players in the list comprise the likes of Arun Lal who missed 40 Tests in between before making a return, Piyush Chawla with 49 Test matches and the most surprising entry of Parthiv Patel who made two epic returns after missing 43 Tests on one occasion and a colossal 83 on another.

Here is the list of Indian batsmen who missed most Tests between two appearances:

(Stats updated till March 4, 2017)