Sixty years after a metal plate was inserted in then India Test cricketer Nari (Nariman) Contractor’s head, it was removed on April 6, 2022. Since the intrepid batsman had to undergo the recent surgery at the age of 88, his family, friends and admirers from the cricket fraternity expressed concern for his wellbeing on different WhatsApp groups. But they need not have worried for after five days of hospitalization and a month following the operation at the Sir H. N. Reliance Hospital in Bombay, Nari was "recovering very well,” his son Hoshedar informed Parsiana.
The thinning of skin with increasing age and the possibility of it getting infected, convinced the family to opt for surgical removal of the metal plate that required the skin to be cut and sutured. This was the third surgery on the head that Nari had to undergo after the West Indies bowler Charlie Griffith’s near fatal delivery had hit his head during the India tour of the Caribbean in 1962. At the time of the first emergency surgery in West Indies when Nari, then captain of the India team, had to be rushed to hospital, four cricketers are known to have donated blood to save his life: Polly Umrigar, Chandu Borde, Bapu Nadkarni, and West Indies skipper Frank Worrell.
The second surgery was at Vellore in Tamil Nadu where the surgeon opted to put a metal plate instead of a mesh to protect Nari’s head. That was the time cricketers had no helmet to guard them!
A left-handed opening batsman, Nari had played for India in 31 Tests and 138 first class games in a career that spanned from 1955 to 1972. Although he did not return to the national team after the head injury, the gutsy cricketer continued to play domestic cricket for the next decade. Fifteen years ago he had been conferred the C. K. Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award.