The Hove accident, in July 1961, had been a near career-ender. Pataudi was a passenger in a car driven by his Sussex teammate Robin Waters when it collided with a vehicle outside the Old Ship Hotel. A shard of windscreen glass penetrated his right eye, leaving him with permanent double vision in that eye. He was 20. Surgeons told him he would never play first-class cricket again.
He was back in the nets at Lord's within weeks, learning to play with one eye effectively closed at the moment of release. He made his Test debut against Ted Dexter's England at Delhi in December 1961, less than six months after the accident. He scored 13 and 28. Three Tests later, in his fourth Test, he made 103 against the same attack at Madras.
Then came the West Indies tour. Contractor was struck down on 17 March 1962. The Indian board cabled Bombay; Pataudi was the obvious choice as vice-captain. The third Test began at Bridgetown on 23 March. Pataudi's first match in charge ended in defeat by an innings and 30 runs. India lost the next two as well. The series finished 5-0 to West Indies.
The captaincy itself, though, transformed Indian cricket. Pataudi held the job until 1970 with one short break, captained in 40 Tests, won nine, drew nineteen, and oversaw the emergence of the spin quartet of Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and Venkataraghavan. Most significantly, in February 1968 he led India to its first overseas Test series win — 3-1 in New Zealand. The youngest Test captain in history would also become the first to win abroad.