February 25, 1975.

The lanky No 11 had already gloved one short pitched delivery to one of the short legs. An alert reaction would have ended the Auckland Test then and there, without the trauma that was about to follow. However, the catch went down.

With the stand between Geoff Howarth and Ewen Chatfield reaching an irritating degree of defiance, Peter Lever, the Lancashire fast bowler, bowled the last man another short one.

But this was too straight, and the New Zealander could not get out of the way. Chatfield, trying to fend it away, turned his head. The ball went off his gloves into his temple.

The tall man staggered, and then fell in a heap. He lay on the ground, twitching, moaning ... The players stood in a suspension of disbelief.

It was the English fielders who first started screaming for help. And no medical man was available. The man who stepped on to the stage as a hero was the physiotherapist of the England side, Bernard Thomas.

Rushing into the ground from the stands, the physio discovered that Chatfield had swallowed his tongue. The debutant's heart had stopped beating. He was technically dead. Thomas asked for resusciation equipment, but there was none.

Chatfield was carried out of the ground on a stretcher, followed by a weeping Lever who could not believe what he had done. He was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, with Thomas in company. It was during the journey that he opened his eyes and asked where he was and what was happening. "Don't worry," was the reassuring answer of Thomas.

It took half an hour for Chatfield to regain consciousness. The damage was a hairline fracture to his skull. Thomas stayed with him, talkin and reassuring before returning to the ground.

Ironically, throughout that southern summer, it had seemed that one or more of the Englishmen would meet his death from a thunderbolt delivered by one of the Lillee-Thomson duo. David Lloyd came within a hairbreath of actually achieveing this nasty end.

Happily, Chatfield enjoyed a long and successful Test career spanning 43 Tests. It was only earlier this year, at the age of 68 that he gave up club cricket. Quite an achievement for someone who technically died 44 years ago.