Indian team's departure from Barbados delayed

The T20 World Cup-winning Indian cricket team’s departure from the Caribbean island has been delayed as the charter flight is yet to arrive here.

An Air India special charter flight named AIC24WC — Air India Champions 24 World Cup — is set to bring back the Indian squad, its support staff, the players’ families and some board officials and Indian media, who have been stranded here for the past three days due to hurricane Beryl.

The Rohit Sharma-led side won the title after pulling off a thrilling seven-run win over South Africa in the final on Saturday.

The flight, which took off from New Jersey, USA on July 2, is expected to land in Barbados around 2 am local time.

As per the schedule, the flight is now expected to take off from Barbados at 4:30am (local time). It 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 in their departure.

The Grantley Adams International airport here 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.

The players are set to be felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi but the schedule of that event has not yet been finalised.

Hurricane Beryl has now become a Category 4 storm moving down from Category 5 and is headed towards Jamaica.