Barbados: In view of Beryl, the category 4 Hurricane that looms large on Barbados horizon, has caught the Indian cricket team unawares.
Hurricane Beryl was closing in on the Windward Islands in the southeast Caribbean as an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm, the National Hurricane Center said Sunday evening. Forecasters warned the first major hurricane of the Atlantic season would bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to the Windward Islands early Monday.
With the airport closed till further notice and no flights coming in or going out of the region, the team and the entire lot of fans, BCCI officials and media persons are stranded on the island where an emergency alert has been sounded for the expected flattener.
According to sources, the BCCI has been trying to get a charter plane to reach the island for a direct flight to Delhi so that the team can get safely home.
However, with the airport closed no flight will be able to land here for at least 24 hours or maybe longer.
For a charter to come here, it will have to fly from the US which is a five and a half hour flight. However with the oceanic depression hovering with wind speed up to 100 miles an hour and intense rain expected in for the next 15 hours, no flight will take the air space to Caribbean.
This means the earliest that the victorious Indian team can leave is July 1 night, weather permitting.
Top BCCI officials, including Secretary Jay Shah, are on the island awaiting safe travel. The South Africa team, however, were lucky to fly out in the morning amid a flurry of activity at the airport.
Cricket fans, meanwhile, are in a state of limbo with their flights being cancelled and the airlines not having any seats till July 5.
Hotels, on the other hand, are not taking reservations fearing the worst as they are on the coast. The last flights of Air Canada, American Airlines, Caribbean Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and JetBlue left the island by 3.30 pm local time.
For the rest, the scare of a hurricane unfolding.
