Dawid Malan says he is intent on making the most of his England Test recall after admitting the manner in which he was dropped three years ago stung.
England's batting capitulation against India at Lord's, which handed Virat Kohli's side a 1-0 lead in the current five-match series, prompted growing calls for the 33-year-old to be recalled for for Wednesday's third LV= Insurance Test at Headingley.
And Malan looks certain to add to his 15 caps, the last of which came against the same opponents in 2018.
By that point he had one Test match hundred and six half-centuries to his name, but with an average of just 27.84, was dropped by national selector Ed Smith, who unsubtly suggested Malan was better suited to overseas conditions.
"I think at the time when you get dropped you're very emotional, you feel you should be playing," he said.
"You work your absolute socks off in your career to earn the right to play for England and you get that call.
"To then have comments that derail you slightly as a player and get pigeon-holed into things - it's amazing how it leads to every single Tom, Dick and Harry having an opinion on you.
"It probably did affect me for the next four, five, six months."
During his Test exile however, Malan's prominence for his country in the white ball formats has risen immensely. He is currently the world's number one ranked T20 batsman and in March this year, became the fastest batsman to score 1000 international runs in that format, taking just 24 innings.
He will take guard tomorrow having played just one first-class knock this year but fittingly, that yielded 199 runs at Headingley.
And he admitted it was now down to him to be able to adapt his game accordingly.
"Yes, not playing a lot of red-ball cricket probably doesn't help with the rhythms and the flows of Test cricket but that's the challenge that we as players have,' he said.
"I think we all know how tough English conditions can be at times. If we are here we believe we are good enough, and it's up to us to find a way of doing it, batting for long periods of time.
"A good 30 or 60 is not good enough really, you want to score those big hundreds and to do that you have to bat for a day, day and a half.
"That's where the challenge comes when you don't play a lot of red-ball cricket, but I don't think we'd be here if we didn't believe we could do it."
