Thousands of miles away, Mail Jones was sitting in the Quran at the Australian Hotel during the Coid 19 pandemic diseases when he received a message from an Indian journalist to see if he had heard about the situation of the Afghan cricket team.
After the Taliban took power, the players looked at the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) for help but they did not find it.
On its own, they were terrified under the rule of the hardline Islamist group.
The journalist contacted Jones a player and asked if she could do anything to help. The player replied that all his teammates and backroom staff needed to leave Afghanistan.
Jones, who won two World Cups with Australia, then went through his contact book and brought volunteers, including his friend Emma Staples, who worked for Cricket Victoria, and Dr. Catherine Ardo, who fit Afghan women. Helping the bowlers to evacuate.
Creating a harsh network of people who were also included on the ground in Afghanistan, they arranged visas and transport to eventually expel 120 people from the country, especially in Pakistan and then in Dubai. From there he left for Melbourne or Canberra on commercial flights with the help of the Australian government.
“I don’t think I understand what I was doing at the time, I understand the breadth.” “We were told that we would not be able to save all.
“To me, it was harmonious about which we now have a joke as a backyard immigration service. This visa was entering documents, passport documents and transferring money to the girls to buy a passport. Was trying
“It was six weeks to collect information from family members trying to get the identity, but we still had an extraordinary spreadsheet in which everyone was told in detail.”
He said the conversation with the players was “really challenging” but “Google’s translation cannot fix anything”.
Staples recalled with a smile, “We now laugh at the language barrier, I call different names like ‘delicious’ and some other strange things.
“All this happened to them so quickly that I don’t think they have the time to think about what they have to leave. I have no doubt that some of them are going through the crime of the survivor. “”
The 52 -year -old Jones, who now works as a Cricket Broadcaster, said there were moments when it was unclear that the mission would succeed.
Jones said, “We had to fight the system when everyone said it was impossible. Matters were going from minutes to minutes.”
He said, “Without a loud noise, there were moments as you were in Jason Borne film,” he said trying to comment on television, and also gave a message to a player who to find the right car He was struggling that would take him to security.
“She couldn’t find a car and she was going to different people and I had to warn her that you can’t do it [for safety reasons]But then I had another comment so I had to say, ‘Don’t do anything until I get back!’
“It was a terrible part for me, just making sure they made the right decisions.”
