Australia Women’s captain Alyssa Healy, also the wife of pacer Mitchell Starc, recently recalled her own version of events of the night when an IPL 2025 encounter between Punjab Kings and Delhi Capitals was suddenly abandoned in Dharamsala.
PBKS Vs DC Match Stopped
The game had reached 10.1 overs, with Punjab Kings in a comfortable position at 122 for 1, when one of the stadium’s floodlights unexpectedly went out. Soon after, other towers also started to fade, and officials asked the players to evacuate the field. As confusion grew, IPL chairman Arun Dhumal was spotted controlling the crowd, asking people to leave the ground peacefully as a blackout was imposed throughout Dharamsala.
Healy On Dharamsala Blackout
“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,” Healy said on The Willow Talk Podcast.
Drone Warnings & Air-Raid Sirens Triggered Emergency Evacuation
Healy, who was sitting in the stands with a few Delhi Capitals player family members, explained the moment she knew something was wrong. Upon arriving at the dressing room, she discovered DC’s Faf du Plessis did not have his shoes on. She asked her husband Mitchell Starc what was happening, worried. Starc explained that there had been drone sightings around the area and air-raid sirens had been activated in the adjacent area.
“We Weren’t Told Anything” Says Alyssa Healy
“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 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,” she said.
“There Was Anxiety”
“We ended up going southwest towards the (Pakistan) border, which was a little bit terrifying. Mitch and I have played too much Call of Duty and we’re noticing all 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. Some peanut down in the village decides it’s a great idea to set off some fireworks in the middle of the day. 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,” Healy added.
The crisis soon turned into a full-blown security operation. Players, their families, support staff, and journalists were all evacuated from Dharamsala in stages under tight security conditions. The evacuation route took them to Hoshiarpur and then to the Jalandhar railway station, where arrangements for further transport had been made.
