He did not play a game for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) but Jordan Cox can call himself an IPL winner. Cox's only on-field contributions in his first IPL season came as a substitute fielder - he was unfortunate to be denied a diving catch after a marginal call by the TV umpire in Sunday's final - but he describes being part of a title-winning squad as "an experience I'll never forget".
But as Cox heads back home - he is expected to play for England Lions in their one-day series against South Africa A, where his first game at Grace Road will feel a world away from RCB's trophy lift at the Narendra Modi Stadium - there is an unavoidable counterfactual: what might have happened if he had spent the past two months playing for Essex in the County Championship?
An England set-up still recovering from an Ashes drubbing made clear ahead of the season that Championship form would play a bigger role in selection ahead of the first Test against New Zealand, which starts at Lord's on Thursday. If Cox had been churning out hundreds for Essex rather than running the drinks for RCB, there is every chance that he would have been picked.
But cricket is a game of timing in more ways than one, and Cox's has often been unfortunate. He went into the IPL auction last year on the fringes of England's squads in all formats, and was desperate to prove his white-ball credentials. At the time, after two seasons of heavy-scoring, he could not have predicted that there would be a sudden premium on Championship runs.
It is not the first time that Cox's standing has suffered for reasons beyond his control. It was 18 months ago that he was preparing to make his Test debut in New Zealand, only to break his thumb in the nets. He watched Jacob Bethell debut instead, and then missed another chance to impress last year when he strained his side before a Test against Zimbabwe.
Cox and Bethell have since become close friends, playing padel and watching Sacha Baron Cohen films together in Bengaluru over the past few weeks. But Cox admits that he "struggled" to see Bethell presented with the cap that he thought was his, and had to be convinced by his girlfriend, Amelia, to go to the ground on the first morning of that Test in Christchurch.
"It was quite a hard thing to be there," he recalls, speaking to ESPNcricinfo in India before the IPL play-offs. "But he's taken it with both hands and it's been incredible to watch what he's become. For someone that hasn't scored any first-class hundreds… to come in and shut everyone up, it just shows that he was the man for the job."
Cox and Bethell made their England debuts together in a T20I against Australia, and were later present at each other's ODI debuts. Cox hopes that Bethell will witness his Test debut too, whenever it may come. "He comes to my room and we watch films til 2am, so the friendship we've gained has been massive," he says.
In a cruel twist, an injury sustained by Bethell could easily have left Cox regretting his decision to go to the IPL. Bethell hurt his finger while diving to save a boundary in their penultimate group game and, when he returned home early as a result, it looked as though James Rew - Cox's competition as the spare keeper/bat - was set to make his debut at Lord's.
But in practice, Bethell looks highly likely to play regardless after scans cleared him of any serious damage, and Cox can rest easy in the knowledge that, with England's middle order unchanged from the fifth Ashes Test, he would have been unlikely to play this week no matter how many early-season runs he had churned out for Essex.
"The IPL's the marquee competition in the world," Cox says, defending his decision. "Test cricket's the biggest thing, and I really want to give it a good crack. But the things I've learned here and the calibre of players that are here is something that, at that moment in time, I just couldn't turn down… It was a dream come true, really, just to be in an IPL team."
He suggests that his recent Championship record for Essex - seven hundreds and an average above 60 across two seasons - shows that he has already proven himself at county level. "If you haven't been around this competition, you don't know what it's like," Cox says. "It's life-changing… Why would you not go over and learn from the best?"
Cox quickly struck up a friendship with Virat Kohli, and says that he spent two months "chewing his ear off" about batting: "He will give you every single bit of information he has in his brain to try and help you, which for me was something that I didn't expect… For someone like that who's achieved everything you'd want to achieve in the game, he gives you everything.
"I've been lucky enough to bat with VK a few times in the nets, which has been pretty awesome. Even batting with Salty [Phil Salt], someone that's been the No. 1-ranked T20 batter in the world, to learn different types of shots and types of opportunities to take down bowling: I feel like my game [against] spin has gone to another level now."
Cox admits that it was frustrating to spend so long on the bench and is clearly itching to play again but, unusually, his arguments in favour of training time in India cannot simply be dismissed as financially motivated: his deal with RCB is worth just INR 75 lakh (around £58,500), five times less than his contract with Welsh Fire in the Hundred. Instead, he clearly believes that his time with RCB has been worthwhile.
His focus, then, is on turning the intangible benefits of his time at the IPL into cold, hard runs over the next few weeks, thereby forcing his way into England squads: firstly, for their white-ball series (five T20Is, three ODIs) against India in July, and perhaps even for their Test series against Pakistan after the Hundred.
"I feel like I've been on the cusp for three years," Cox says with a smile. "Hopefully, I'll get back and hit the ground running. That would be ideal - and then what will be will be."