Defeated Team India make a quiet return

New Delhi: India’s vanquished cricketers returned home today after a demoralising tour of Australia during which they were whitewashed in the Test series and proved no good in the ODI tri-series that followed. Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar and Rahul Sharma arrived here at the Indira Gandhi International airport from Brisbane via Singapore early this morning. The players landed much later then their scheduled arrival and chose to make quiet exits from the airport without talking to the waiting mediapersons. The Mumbai-based group of Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan and Umesh Yadav arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, while spinner Ravichandran Ashwin landed in Chennai yesterday. [caption id=“attachment_233261” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“R Ashwin and his wife at Chennai Airport. PTI”]  [/caption] Tendulkar, Zaheer, Sharma and Yadav had separated from rest of the squad at Singapore to take a connecting flight to Mumbai. As soon as Sri Lanka pipped Australia at the post in the last league match of the tri-series in Melbourne on Friday night, the reservation plans were put afoot and the Indian players lost little time in leaving for home. Irfan Pathan and Parthiv Patel, with bases in Gujarat, will leave for home today. The Indians were not exactly glued to their TV screens yesterday to watch the outcome of the Australia-Sri Lanka match which the latter won by nine runs in the final over. While Zaheer and Yadav have been rested for India’s next engagement — the Asia Cup in Bangladesh — Tendulkar and Rohit are part of the squad to take part in the event commencing 11 March. Rohit has also been named in the Mumbai squad to take part in the Vijay Hazare Trophy one-day inter-zonal tournament in Delhi from next week. India had a disastrous tour of Australia losing the Test series 0-4 and failing to make the finals of the triangular ODIs. PTI