Alyssa Healy opens up on the near miss moment that changed the international cricket landscape

Alyssa Healy was in India’s far north when husband Mitchell Starc’s IPL game was abandoned and players were ferried out of the country. She details their escape from the conflict engulfing India and Pakistan.

Alyssa Healy has pulled back the curtain on the chilling moment an IPL match was abandoned and the cricket world descended into turmoil.

The Australian women’s captain was in Dharamsala when husband Mitchell Starc’s match between Delhi and Punjab was dramatically abandoned and players and fans at the stadium were evacuated in a flurry of panic due to missile strikes 60km away.

Indian cricket officials are under the blowtorch for arrogantly going ahead with the match and exposing players to danger in an escalating conflict when airports in the area were already shut due to Dharamsala’s proximity to the border with Pakistan.

Healy has opened up on The Willow Talk podcast to tell the inside story of the near miss that has changed the entire landscape of international cricket.

Alyssa Healy calls the experience ‘surreal’. Picture: Jeremy Ng/Getty Images

“It was a surreal experience. 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,’” Healy said on the Willow Talk show she hosts with Adam Peacock and Brad Haddin.

“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 down 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.”

The Delhi Capitals' match was abandoned. Picture: Money SHARMA / AFP

An original plan to evacuate the teams by bus that night were abandoned due to safety concerns trying to move at night, but Healy said the five and a half-hour bus ride and six hour train journey the next day to escape the border back to Delhi was also unsettling.

“We ended up going south west towards the border which was a little bit terrifying,” Healy told Willow Talk.

“Mitch and I have played too much Call of Duty and we’re noticing all the SAM 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.”

It’s understood all Australian players are now back in Australia, although IPL coaches Ricky Ponting, Brad Haddin and James Hopes remain in India, with Justin Langer and Mike Hussey also on their way back to the subcontinent.

Ponting has been hailed a hero by his Punjab franchise for reportedly disembarking a plane he had boarded back to Australia, when news came through that a ceasefire between India and Pakistan had been called.

Ricky Ponting was hailed a hero, remaining in India. Picture: Supplied

As the IPL prepares to outline its resumption date and expectations for overseas players to return to finish the tournament, Starc and other Australian stars including Pat Cummins, Travis Head and Josh Inglis will have to make judgement calls in the coming 24-48 hours on what their intentions are.

Healy said if she was playing in the IPL, she would need assurances from the Australian Government to feel comfortable returning given the amount of misinformation emanating.

“There was a lot of anxiety around the Australian group because we didn’t have a whole heap of information as to what was going on,” Healy explained on Willow Talk.

“That’s probably been the really interesting and probably the scariest part of this whole situation is the misinformation.

“… (we were) quite close to what’s being fought over, but we were assured everything was fine, ‘everything is OK. It’s miles away, the game will go ahead and everything will be fine.’

“At the end of the day they evacuated the stadium as a precaution, which was fine, but it was probably a little bit too close for comfort.”

Healy said Delhi players were having lunch at the team hotel on game day, when anxiety levels were triggered, thankfully by a false alarm.

“Some peanut down in the village decides it’s a great idea to set off some fireworks in the middle of the day,” Healy 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.”