India victorious squad at the T20 World Cup 2024 is set to depart from Barbados in a few hours from now after several delays. Hurricane Beryl's landfall soon after the final played on Saturday (June 29) led to the players, support staff and the BCCI officials getting stuck in Barbados over the last few days. In fact, the Indian media contingent was also in Barbados and a special Air India flight has reached Barbados and will now bring the heroes of World Cup back home.
The Rohit Sharma-led side defeated South Africa by seven runs in the thrilling played at the Kensington Oval in Barbados last week on Saturday. But since then, they couldn't fly out of the island with the airport shut and all the flights to and from Barbados were also cancelled with Beryl making its landfall.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been making efforts to fly out the Indian team along with its officials and the media for the last couple of days and after several delays, the flight is expected to take off in a few hours. According to several reports from Barbados, the World Cup winning players will land in New Delhi at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on July 4 early morning around 4 to 5 AM IST if there are no further delays in their departure from Barbados.
The Barbados airport resumed its operations on July 2 (Tuesday). Earlier, the Indian team was scheduled to leave around 6 PM local time on July 2 (3:30 AM IST on July 3) but after multiple delays, the Air India flight that took off from India is expected to land around 1 AM local time on July 3 (10:30 AM IST July 3). BCCI Secretary Jay Shah has stayed back with the entire squad and even he will be with the team on the flight.
Rohit Sharma and his troops are expected to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on their arrival to New Delhi and the PM is also likely to felicitate the World Cup winning players and the staff. Moreover, three players from the World Cup squad - Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sanju Samson and Shivam Dube - are also due to fly to Harare as they have been picked for the five-match T20I series against Zimbabwe. They might miss the first two matches as they will only be able to travel now after the felicitation.
