Bridgetown (Barbados), July 3: The stranded Indian journalists, who went to the West Indies to cover the 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup, have thanked BCCI secretary Jay Shah for helping them fly on the special chartered flight for the men’s side set to travel from Barbados to New Delhi.
An Air India Boeing 777 special charter flight named AIC24WC – whose full form is ‘Air India Champions 24 World Cup’ – is bringing back the victorious Indian team, support staff, the players’ families, BCCI officials and the Indian media persons, who have been stuck in Barbados for the last three days due to hurricane Beryl.
From tweets of various reporters of print, electronic and digital mediums in the Caribbean, it has come to the light that Shah heard of their plight of being stuck in the island and offered to accommodate them in the chartered flight taking them safely back home. They all have taken to social media platform ‘X’ to thank Shah for his empathy through this goodwill gesture in an uncertain time of going back home for them.
The Rohit Sharma-led side won the T20 World Cup for the second time at the Kensington Oval after securing a thrilling seven-run win over South Africa in the title clash on Saturday. It became a fitting way for Rohit, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja to sign off from T20Is on a high, as well as give a good send-off to head coach Rahul Dravid.
The special chartered flight at the Grantley Adams International Airport is set to depart at 4:30am local time and is tentatively scheduled to arrive at the IGI International Airport in New Delhi on Thursday morning 6 am, provided no more delays happen.
The delayed travel plans have also meant that Sanju Samson, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Shivam Dube won’t be able to reach Harare in time for the upcoming five-match T20I series against Zimbabwe, starting on July 6. For the first two matches, Harshit Rana, B Sai Sudharsan, and Jitesh Sharma have been named as their replacements.
IANS
