The leg healed uneventfully, but then Chandra suffered a horrific injury in a road traffic accident. He was riding a motor scooter, making his way to his work in a bank, when he was struck by a wheel that had worked its way loose from a trailer. He smashed his jaw on the road as he was knocked down, and his left wrist was fractured as well. His broken jaw had to be wired, and he was on a liquid diet for some time. Such were the effects he missed the whole of the 1968/69 season, and wondered at times whether he would ever play again.
Chandra was back, and in form in 1969/70, but the selectors seemed to have forgotten him. When India finally did take a Test from West Indies, and they took the series as well, in the Caribbean in 1970/71, Chandra wasn't even in the party. His Test career might have been finished, had it not been for the perceived weakness of English batsmen against leg spin, so he was named in the party that came to England in 1971 this time for, crucially, the second half of the summer when English wickets were much harder than in May and June.
India made history in 1971 by, as they had a few months earlier in the Caribbean, winning their first Test in England and the series. They were perhaps fortunate to go into the final Test at 0-0, and having bowled badly at Old Trafford Chandra might not have played at all. But he put in a fine performance in a county match in the lead up to the Oval Test and stayed in the team. When the game got underway England secured a first innings lead of 71, and then got to 23-0 in their second innings. Fortune favoured Chandra again at that point, as the Indians were unarguably lucky when John Jameson was run out, backing up as Chandra managed to deflect a Brian Luckhurst drive onto the stumps. But there was no luck needed from then on as Chandra took 6-38 in an innings that disintegrated to 101 all out, and India went on to claim a historic victory as they chased down the 173 needed with four wickets in hand.
