Alyssa Healy has shared a gripping account of the night of “complete madness” when the IPL match between Punjab Kings and Delhi Capitals was called off midway in Dharamsala due to air raid sirens in neighbouring cities.

The match on May 8 was halted when Punjab were cruising at 122/1 in 10.1 overs with floodlight failure cited as the initial reason. Healy, who is married to Australia
and Delhi Capitals pacer Mitchell Starc, was in the stands along with family members of other players.

Assuming it was a minor issue, Healy and the others with her stayed calm at first before things got out of hand.

“Couple of the light towers went out and we were just there waiting. I heard a rumour a couple of seats down that we might have to evacuate the stadium cause the lights had gone down,” Healy, who is also the Australia Women’s captain, said on the ‘WillowTalk’ podcast.

“And we are a large group of family and extra support staff. And next minute the guy that kind of wrangles the group of us and gets us on the bus, comes up and his face was white.

“And he was like, we need to go right now.”

Such was the urgency that Healy recalled Faf du Plessis being in the room without
his shoes.

“The boys (players) are there. Faf didn’t even have shoes on. They’re all just waiting there, looking stressed. I asked Mitch, ‘what’s going on?’ And he said, ‘the town 60 kilometres away had just been smacked by some of the missiles’.”

“So all of a sudden we’re crammed into vans and off we go back to the hotel. There was madness. We’re sitting on the bus with some of the Punjab players. I think Shreyas (Iyer) was on my bus. It was just like get in a van as soon as you can get out of there,” Healy added.

The teams were brought to Delhi through a lengthy road and train journey which involved traversing Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar.

With inputs from PTI