Australia’s women’s team captain Alyssa Healy recalled the anxiety and stress the players had to face last week in Dharamsala after the Indian Premier League match between Punjab Kings and Delhi Capitals was called off because of the India-Pakistan conflict.
On May 8, the lights at the stadium went off in the 11th over due to attacks in Pathankot, roughly 90km from Dharamsala. The next morning, the league was suspended. On Monday, following a ceasefire understanding between India and Pakistan, it was announced that the would resume coming Saturday.
Describing the sequence of incidents that night, Healy said it was a ‘surreal experience’ and ‘there was madness’.
“It was a surreal experience,” Healy told The Willow Talk podcast, according to The Australian. “All of a sudden a couple of the light towers went out and we were just sitting there up the top waiting… we’re a large group of family and extra support staff and the next minute the guy who wrangles the group of us and gets us on the bus came up and his face was white.
“He was like, ‘we need to go right now’. Then (another) guy came out and his face was white and he grabbed one of the children and said, ‘we need to leave right now’. We were like, ‘what’s going on?’ We weren’t told anything. We had no idea. Next minute we are being shuffled into this room which was like a holding pen. All the boys were in there. Faf (South African star Faf du Plessis) didn’t even have shoes on. We were all just waiting there looking stressed.
“I said to Mitch, ‘what’s going on?’ He said the town 60km away had just been smacked by some of the missiles so there was a complete blackout in the area. That’s why the lights were off because the Dharamsala stadium was like a beacon at that point in time.
“All of a sudden we’re crammed into vans and off we go back to the hotel. There was madness.”
Healy added the road and train journey to on Friday was ‘unsettling’.
“We ended up going southwest towards the (Pakistan) border, which was a little bit terrifying,” she was quoted as saying by The Australian. “Mitch and I have played too much Call of Duty and we’re noticing all the (surface-to-missile) sites that were just sitting there ready to go. They’re radar-operated systems that shoot missiles at aircraft. (We saw) a few of them on the way through in some small towns.”
Healy also recalled how the anxiety levels increased when firecrackers went off near the team hotel when the players were having lunch.
“Some peanut down in the village decides it’s a great idea to set off some fireworks in the middle of the day,” she recalled. “I think everyone at lunch (froze), turned around and was like, ‘oh my God!’ And then I could pinpoint, I could see the fireworks going up. I hope it was a wedding and I hope they have a beautiful marriage but that was just not good timing. There was anxiety and terrified at the same time, but I still feel like we would have been OK. We weren’t right in the firing line.”
