 "Team India were originally dye to fly out of Barbados on Monday morning following their T20 World Cup triumph on Saturday. AP")
The Rohit Sharma-led Indian team departed from Barbados after a delay due to a hurricane, and will land in New Delhi in the early hours of Thursday.
According to PTI, an Air India special charter flight named AIC24WC — Air India Champions 24 World Cup — will bring back the Indian team, including the support staff, families of players, some officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Indian media, all of whom have been stranded in Barbados for the last three days due to Hurricane Beryl.
“Finally getting out of Barbados tonight. Thanks to the efforts of @BCCI & @JayShah to put us on the chartered flight with the Indian team back to Delhi. It was proving to be an impossible task to get an exit out of the island after #HurricaneBeryl. The World Cup champions should now touch down in Delhi by 4am on Thursday, 4th of July,” sports presenter Nikhil Naz wrote on ‘X’, formerly Twitter.
The flight, which took off from New Jersey, USA on 2 July, arrived in Barbados early morning on Wednesday, 3 July (afternoon in India), according to a post by a senior journalist on X.
The flight was scheduled to take off from Barbados at 4:30am (local time), and will take a 16-hour flying time to reach Delhi, where the team will land on Thursday at 6 am (IST) if there are no further delays.
“The team has left from Barbados on a special Air India flight hired by the BCCI. The Indian journalists who were stuck there (Barbados) are also coming on the same flight along with BCCI president (Roger Binny) and secretary (Jay Shah), who are looking after all the arrangements,” BCCI vice-president Rajeev Shukla told PTI.
“The flight will land at Delhi airport tomorrow 6 am. The team will meet PM Narendra Modi at 11 am at his residence. After this, the team will fly to Mumbai, where a ceremony has been organised.
“There will be a road show from Nariman Point in an open bus and later we will honour and felicitate the players with the prize money of Rs 125 crore as announced,” he added.
The Grantley Adams International airport in Barbados resumed its operations on Tuesday. Earlier, the Indian team was scheduled to leave around 6 pm local time on July 2 and arrive at 7.45pm (IST) on Wednesday.
Hurricane Beryl has now become a Category 4 storm moving down from Category 5 and is headed towards Jamaica.
The Men in Blue were originally scheduled to leave for New York from Barbados on Monday morning.
From there, they were to take a connecting flight to Dubai before arriving in India. However, following the delay, the team will directly land in Delhi, where they are scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On Saturday, India defeated South Africa by seven runs in Barbados to clinch their second T20 World Cup title and their first ICC title in 11 years.
Rohit Sharma won the toss and India decided to bat first. Virat Kohli (76) and Axar Patel (47) helped India post 176/7 after a shaky start in the powerplay, before Hardik Pandya (3/20) led a spirited bowling effort to restrict the Proteas to 169/8 despite a valiant half-century from Heinrich Klaasen.
Soon after the final, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja announced their retirements from T20Is.
With PTI inputs