New Delhi:The T20 World Cup champions landed at Delhi’s T3 airport from Barbados at 6 am on July 4, five days after winning the coveted trophy, and quickly went into another round of breakneck celebratory round of activities.
The special Air India charter AIC24WC, unofficially being called the Champions Flight, took 16.5 hours to get the team from the hurricane-hit island to Delhi where a nation had waited for five days to celebrate their team’s big T20 win after 17 years.
This was the first ever direct flight to have operated from the Caribbean to India. It was also a first for Air India which does not fly in the Caribbean sector.
The Delhi leg of activities for the team kickstarted with a cake-cutting ceremony at the airport’s immigration area.
After this, the team was taken straight to the ITC Maurya hotel to freshen up and rush out to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi before flying off to Mumbai the same day.
At Mumbai, too, the schedule is hectic with the victory procession awaiting the team members there. The BCCI has arranged for a 1.5 km road show in decorated open buses for the fans to greet the team.
The roadshow will start at Nariman Point in the evening around 5.30 pm and go up to the skipper Rohit Sharma’s home stadium, the Wankhede, where the players will have lunch and then finally, disperse for their respective homes.
On the plane, the players used the time to recoup, catch up with sleep, take time out with travelling family members and then intermingle with media persons for photo sessions and general chitchat.
Thanks to the efforts of BCCI secretary Jay Shah, the Indian media accompanied the team on the charter after regular flights were cancelled due to the hurricane in Barbados.
