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Suddenly, the bus began to drift.

“The driver passed out,” said Jeff, who had nodded off in the seat beside Alex. “My brother yelled to wake him up, and of course in doing so he woke me up. I looked in front of me and I could see the driver slumped down.

“We were going 100 km/h and we were 100 per cent in the other lane. So I ran down to basically take over driving the bus. I had to sit on the driver, who never did wake up while this was all going on, and the first thing I had to do was steer the bus back into the right lane, which I did, but I think I woke everybody up on the bus in the process.

“I wanted to get back into the right lane pretty quickly, let’s put it that way. Obviously I had never driven a bus before, much less taking the wheel of a bus going 100 km/h in the wrong lane. ”

After figuring out where the brake was, Hunt pulled over to the shoulder and stopped the bus. An ambulance was called for the driver, and the team had to wait a couple of hours for his replacement. While standing outside, Hunt and a few of the players watched the traffic and thanked their lucky stars.

“We marvelled at how transport truck after transport truck was passing us,” Hunt said. “We figured we were in the wrong lane for a half a kilometre. And the fact there was no car or no oncoming transport, which was 80 per cent of the traffic on that road, is an absolute miracle.

“To make matters worse, or more scary, where I stopped the bus was about a half kilometre from a sharp left turn. If we were going straight, we would have gone right over a ravine. If he had passed out even 30 seconds later than he did, the scenarios for that being a tragedy were multiple.