Thousands of miles away, Meljones was sitting in quarantine at an Australian hotel during the Covid-19 pandemic when he received a message from an Indian journalist asking if he had heard about the situation of the Afghan cricket team. .
The players had sought support from the Afghan Cricket Board (ACB) after the Taliban took over but received nothing.
On their own, they were scared under the control of the Hardline Islamist groups.
The journalist contacted Jones with one of the players and she asked if there was anything she could do to help. The player replied, saying that her teammates and all the staff in the backroom needed to get out of Afghanistan.
Jones, who won two World Cups in Australia, went through contacts and volunteered, including his friend Emmas Trails, who worked at Cricket Victoria, and Dr. Catherine Ordway, who evacuated Afghanistan female soccer player. It was equipped with.
They created a rigorous network of people who can help, including on the ground in Afghanistan, and eventually brought 120 people to Pakistan and on military flights to Dubai, eventually bringing 120 people abroad. . From there they flew to Melbourne or Canberra on commercial flights supported by the Australian government.
“I don’t think we understood the enormousness of what we were doing at the time,” Staples said. “We were told that we might not be able to save everyone.
“For me, it was now coordinating what we were joking about as a backyard immigration service. It was about submitting visa documents, passport documents and girls to buy passports. I was about to send money to.
“We were gathering information from our family for six weeks and trying to get our ID, and this extraordinary spreadsheet detailed everyone.”
She said that communication with players is “really challenging,” but “nothing Google Translate couldn’t fix.”
“We’ve now laughed about the language barrier and called various names like ‘delicious’,” Staples remembered with a smile.
“It all happened so fast for them, so I don’t think they have time to think about what they had to leave behind. There’s no doubt some of them are experiencing survivor guilt. .”
Jones, 52, who now works as a cricket broadcaster, said there were moments when the mission wasn’t clear to be successful.
“We had to fight the system when everyone kept saying it was impossible. Things were happening to the moment,” Jones said.
“There was a moment when I felt like I was in a Jason Bourne film without sounding light,” she said.
“She couldn’t find a car and was up to various people, so I had to warn her that you couldn’t do it (for safety reasons) , I had another commentary stint, so I had to say “Don’t” anything until I came back! ”
“That’s the scary part for me and just make sure they’ve made the right decision.”
