Stranded In Barbados Due To Hurricane Beryl, Here's When Team India Will Likely Return Home

The Indian cricket team, fresh from their T20 World Cup victory, is set to return home via a charter flight on Tuesday evening.

This follows an announcement by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who indicated that the island's airport would resume operations within the next 6 to 12 hours. The airport had been shut down due to Hurricane Beryl, a category 4 storm that struck the island on Sunday evening.

"I don't want to speak in advance of it, but I have literally been in touch with the airport personnel and they're doing their last checks now and we want to resume normal operations as a matter of urgency," Mottley told PTI.

"There are a number of people who were due to leave last night late or today or tomorrow morning. And we want to make sure that we can facilitate those persons, so I would anticipate that within the next six to 12 hours the airport will be open," she added.

The Indian contingent, which includes the World Cup-winning squad, support staff, some BCCI officials, and the players' families, has been stranded in Barbados for the past two days. They are scheduled to depart Bridgetown at 6 PM local time and are expected to arrive in Delhi at 7:45 PM IST on Wednesday. Following their arrival, the players will be felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, though the exact timing of this event is yet to be determined.

Five players-Rinku Singh, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shivam Dube, Khaleel Ahmed, and Sanju Samson-are scheduled to travel to Zimbabwe for a five-match T20I series. The remaining squad members for the series had already left India earlier on Tuesday.

Barbados has been grappling with life-threatening winds and storms since Monday, affecting the island and its neighboring territories.

With a population nearing 300,000, the country has been in lockdown since Sunday evening. The window for the Indian team to leave Bridgetown is tight, as Prime Minister Mottley mentioned "another hurricane is expected to hit on Wednesday".