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Surface-to-air-missiles: Cricket Aus breaks silence on IPL threat
SEN • May 13th, 2025 12:03 pm
- IPL to resume this weekend
- Aussie players evacuated to home soil
- Alyssa Healy caught up in chaos
- Air raid sirens forced match abandonment
Cricket Australia has broken its silence on the ongoing security threat along the Pakistan-India border after a host of players were forced to flee amid air strikes.
Rising tensions between the two nations forced the temporary suspension of the IPL and PSL over the weekend with one match in Dharamsala dramatically abandoned midway through because of air raid sirens and an imminent threat to player and fan safety.
All Australians barring Ricky Ponting, Mike Hussey and James Hopes have since evacuated India or Pakistan with question marks over whether they will be willing to return.
On Monday night the BCCI announced the IPL would resume this weekend with 13 fixtures plus finals left to play.
While some Australian players and their teams have no hope of reaching the finals, some may find themselves on the hook contract-wise to see out the season.
Whether they do or not is a decision Cricket Australia is leaving up to the individual.
“Following the announcement that the IPL will resume on Saturday, Cricket Australia will support players in their individual decisions whether to return to India or not,” CA said in a statement.
“Team management will work through preparation implications for the World Test Championship Final for those players who choose to play in the remaining IPL matches.
“We are maintaining communication with the Australian Government and BCCI around security arrangements and safety.”
SURFACE TO AIR MISSILES
Among the Australians to flee India, Alyssa Healy has shared harrowing details about how she and husband Mitchell Starc escaped the danger zone.
Healy was in Dharamsala watching Starc in the IPL when thew lights at the stadium went out and the match was abandoned.
“It was a surreal experience," she said. "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.
“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'.
“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 (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.
“We ended up going south-west towards the border which was a little bit terrifying.
“Mitch and I have played too much Call of Duty and we’re noticing all the SAM (surface-to-air-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.
“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. That’s probably been the really interesting and probably the scariest part of this whole situation is the misinformation.”
If named in the World Test Championship squad this afternoon it remains to be seen if Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Travis Head return.
