Ross Taylor had learned he'll have to relinquish duties as New Zealand skipper while playing the Galle Test on the 2012 tour of Sri Lanka before overcoming that pain and responding with defiant knocks of 142 and 70 during his last game at the helm in Blackcaps' historic victory at the P Sara Oval in Colombo.
It taught the man a life lesson as he arrived on the same shores for this tour feeling better than he did the last time. "I went two weeks without sleep. I was having probably two hours of sleep each night. But I was still able to score a 140-odd and back it up with a 70. It's amazing how resilient I felt I was back then. Things happen in life that are out of your control. It is what it is," Taylor told ESPNcricinfo.
"I look back at the World Cup final at Lord's and I don't think you can get further apart from Galle in 2012 to Lord's in 2019. Life is about ups and downs. The high of Lord's trumps anything that's happened to me in cricket."
Taylor, who has played 93 Tests and 228 ODIs for New Zealand in his career, also reflected upon the injury issues he had had to encounter along the way.
"I had some freaky injuries, but that's sport, I guess. The operation in Zimbabwe was interesting. The medical release just said it was an injury to the groin, so when I got home people just thought I'd hurt my groin."
"When I explained [that it was a testicle injury], it was a bit of a shock. The surgeon took a photo of it, and our doctor at the time sent it through to me. I found later that in New Zealand taking that kind of photo isn't legal," he said.
"Two weeks after the (eye) surgery I had throwdowns with the trainer and I saw the ball swing from the hand for the first time. At the start of my innings for a couple of years, I was even more fidgety than normal. I just kept missing balls that I felt I should be at least getting in behind."
"I was playing and missing and was very late on it. I was still able to score runs, but your confidence in your first 10 to 20 balls was not as good as it should have been. Once I saw the ball swing from the hand, I felt like a 20-year-old again," Taylor added.
Also, the 35-year-old veteran now looks at the recent World Cup final - which his team lost to England on boundary count after a thrilling super-over tie at Lord's - "with fond memories" of being part of a great game rather than still dreading the painful disappointment of it all.
"It would have been nice to have won it. It wasn't until we got home to New Zealand that you knew what the effect was. I had a holiday with my family in France, just to get away from it afterward, and had a lot of people were coming up - English, Kiwis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans - saying what a fantastic game it was, and that it was something that they'd never forget,'"
"And when we got home, people would come up and tell you their stories of how they'd watched the game - the lack of sleep and how they got through the next day."
"With the time zones, Kiwis would have been up all night. They'd all correct you when you said, 'Sorry we lost the game'. They'd stop you right there and go: 'No, you didn't lose the game, you tied the game'."
"I was surprised at how many people said that. I've been fortunate enough to play in two World Cup finals, in Melbourne and at Lord's. You couldn't ask for two better places, given the history of the grounds. Just disappointed we couldn't lift the trophy," Taylor concluded.
(Inputs from ESPNcricinfo)
