Ukraine conflict: I heard about 18 huge explosions, says Ukrainian cricket chief
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WATCH: Footage from Ukraine shows explosions, a missile strike and a helicopter under fire
Kobus Olivier felt nervous on Thursday when he woke early in his seventh floor flat in Kyiv.
The chief executive of the Ukraine Cricket Federation lives in an apartment block on the main road that leads into the city - about a 15-minute drive from the centre.
Instead of walking his four dogs at 5am he got up an hour earlier than usual and was out on the streets at 4am when he heard the first thunderous noise indicating a Russian assault.
"I heard about 18 huge explosions - like it was right next to me - so I knew immediately what was happening," he told the BBC Stumped podcast.
"I rushed into the apartment and put the news on. I heard they apparently bombed military bases just around Kyiv and also Boryspil airport [Ukraine's largest].
"There is video footage from Belarus which is only two hours away from Kyiv. The ground troops are coming in with their tanks, so it's real."
Ukraine's cricket chief - a former South African club professional - is speaking to us from his flat via Zoom. Behind him, through the window, the Kyiv sky is grey, overcast and forbidding.
Communications are evidently intact for now, and Olivier is remarkably upbeat considering the circumstances. He has been looking forward to telling us about cricket in Ukraine and isn't going to be deterred, assuring us he is OK in his flat. He has no intentions of going anywhere.
"In the past week or so, the Ukrainians, nobody believed it was going to happen, they thought it can never really happen," he says.
"Last night people were walking around with coffees, sitting at street cafes and this morning you just see chaos. The street outside Kyiv is absolutely jammed. Cars are not moving. People are trying to get out of Kyiv in their cars because the airports have been bombed."
Two weeks ago Olivier (right on the image below) was in meetings planning an upcoming cricket tournament.
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Olivier first visited Ukraine five years ago when he arrived for a holiday, pleased to be in a country where there was no cricket that he knew of.
Having spent 14 years as director of cricket at the University of Cape Town and a year in charge of Cricket Kenya, followed by four years setting up cricket academies in Dubai, he simply needed a break from the game.
He fell in love with the city though and decided to stay. When he took on a job as a teacher it was cricket that he turned to in a bid to engage his students in English lessons. They loved it.
"It was something completely new," he explains. "So I started a cricket programme for the Ukrainian kids in Ukrainian schools. I'm also director of one of the private schools here, so I started bringing cricket into PE lessons and from there cricket has been snowballing."
Cricket has had a presence in Ukraine for around 20 years, but mostly played by hordes of male Indian medical students, who apply for university places through a company run by ex-pat Indian Hardeep Singh, who is also the president of Ukraine Cricket Federation.
In order to have a chance of ICC recognition though, the federation needed boys' and girls' grassroots programmes. Hence bringing Olivier and his passion and experience into the fold.
An application is currently lodged with the ICC for Ukraine to become an Associate Member, meaning they would become eligible for development funding and gain international Twenty20 status. A decision is due in July. But who knows what will have happened to Ukraine and its people by then.
As for the Indian medical students, Olivier estimates that thousands are currently stranded in the country.
"I spoke to our president, he's unfortunately in one of the hotbeds [Kharkiv] and there are a lot of military bases that have apparently been under heavy fire," says Olivier.
"He's got about 10,000 Indian students there in hostels. They were supposed to fly out this morning to be evacuated back to India. Unfortunately that's not happening so he's helping them to stay in the hostels and not go out."
Olivier describes himself as a cricketing nomad, but in Kyiv he has found a meaningful home. He insists a Russian invasion won't make him join the queues of cars trying to leave.
"In Kyiv I'm making a difference. I'm really doing something special, I'm doing something in Ukraine that I couldn't do anywhere else, so for me to leave Kyiv now, I can't do it. Cricket is keeping me here and I can't turn my back on this."
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