A solid left-hand opening batsman, Nari Contractor captained India to the West Indies in 1961-62, but his tour did not last long: he was hit on the head by a Charlie Griffith special, and never played Test cricket again. In this Wisden.com exclusive, Contractor looks back in no anger. I was warned. The day before our tour match with Barbados, the Indian team was at a sundowner where Frank Worrell came up and warned us to be careful of a bowler named Charlie Griffith. He said Griffith did not have a clean action, was pretty quick, hostile and loved to go after the batsmen. He wanted us to guard ourselves against injuries as we had lost the first two Tests and had several players on the injured list. In fact, Tiger Pataudi and ML Jaisimha had missed both the Tests through injuries.

I was to have rested for the Barbados match, as playing that game would have meant going through the entire tour without a break. I was, however, compelled to play as our openers, Jaisimha and Vijay Mehra, were both injured.

Barbados batted first and declared just before lunch on the second day. We were due to play one over before the break. My superstition always made me bat at No. 2, but we were trying out Dilip Sardesai in the unaccustomed role of an opener and I felt it would have been unfair for me to ask him to play that solitary over, so I took first strike.

To my surprise, it was not the experienced Wes Hall who came on to bowl the first over but Griffith, still an unknown name in international cricket. I played the entire over and as we went in for lunch, Sardesai said: "Why is everybody talking about Griffith being quick? He is hardly fast."

I felt the same way. Our first impression of Griffith was that he was, at most, fast-medium.

In the first over after lunch, Sardesai got out to Hall and the next man in, Rusi Surti, the left-hander, played out the rest of the over.

Then came Griffith's second over. His first and second balls rifled past me like bullets. I played the third ball, which reared around my rib-cage, and Conrad Hunte, at short leg, caught the ball on the half-volley. Had the catch been taken, my career might have been saved.

At this point, Rusi angrily shouted from the non-striker's end: "Skipper, he is chucking."

I calmed him down.

The Pavilion end had no sightscreen in those days, and the dressing-room was right behind the wicket, which made sighting the ball difficult for batsmen. As Griffith ran in to bowl the fourth ball of the over, somebody opened the window behind the bowler's arm. My conversation with Rusi had already shaken my concentration, and I was caught in two minds: should I move away or play at it? I was on my back foot when I lost sight of the ball; then suddenly, it was right before my eyes. I turned my head instinctively and was hit on the temple. The impact of the ball was at 90 degrees, and that was what caused the damage.

(Griffith also hit Vijay Manjrekar - on the bridge of the nose - later in the day and was called for throwing in the second innings.)

I bled profusely from my nose and ears. I was rushed to the Barbados General Hospital in an ambulance, where I heard one of the doctors tell our manager Ghulam Ahmed that I had suffered a concussion - and that 90% of the time it was fatal. The general surgeon did whatever could be done without an operation and left instructions that he should be informed immediately if I vomited or if my limbs got stiff or paralytic. Ghulam, when he visited me at night, noticed that I had thrown up, and that my left side was paralysed. He immediately rang up the doctor.

In an emergency measure, my skull was opened to prevent the clot from getting bigger. The doctor told Ghulam that if that hadn't been done, I would not have survived till the next morning, when a neurosurgeon from Trinidad was expected to fly in to operate on me.

The surgery lasted 16 hours. Frank Worrell, Polly Umrigar, Bapu Nadkarni, Chandu Borde and the journalist KN Prabhu all donated blood and saved my life. I regained consciousness after six days, by which time my wife had been flown in from India. I flew to the USA for a medical examination, and a few months later had more surgery, at Vellore, to insert a metal plate.

I played first-class cricket till 1970, and tried my best to revive my Test career. I think it was on humanitarian grounds that I was never picked again.

Nari Contractor was talking to H.Natarajan.

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