KOLKATA, In­dia – Play­ers and staff of the West In­dies se­nior men’s team will have to wait just a few more days be­fore they can re­turn home from In­dia.

The re­gion­al team, which has been strand­ed on the sub­con­ti­nent since March 1 due to the cri­sis in West Asia, have been in­formed that they will now leave in the ear­ly hours of Tues­day ac­cord­ing to a re­port from ES­P­N­cricin­fo.

Both West In­dies and South Africa are sched­uled to leave on a char­ter flight on March 10, with the Pro­teas trav­el­ing to Jo­han­nes­burg, while the Windies will trav­el to An­tigua from there.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the two sides were ear­li­er ex­pect­ing to leave on Sun­day, March 8, but con­fir­ma­tion of the new date was giv­en to them on Sun­day af­ter­noon.

It is the third time the re­gion­al team’s trav­el­ing plans have been al­tered. They were ini­tial­ly sched­uled to leave on Fri­day, but that date was then pushed back to Sun­day.

Three mem­bers of South Africa’s squad – Ke­shav Ma­haraj, Ja­son Smith and George Linde – along with the en­tire man­age­ment will leave In­dia on Sun­day it­self, and head to New Zealand, where South Africa will play five T20Is start­ing March 15.

The chang­ing trav­el plans, caused by air­spaces be­ing closed or lim­it­ed in West Asia fol­low­ing the cri­sis, have caused un­hap­pi­ness in both camps.

<Sir Clive sym­pa­this­es with strand­ed West In­dies play­ers>

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana – For­mer West In­dies cap­tain, Sir Clive Lloyd has ex­pressed sym­pa­thy to mem­bers of the West In­dies team, who have been strand­ed in In­dia for the past week.

The re­gion­al team was sched­uled to leave the sub­con­ti­nent af­ter be­ing elim­i­nat­ed from the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup on March 1, but has been un­able to do so due to the on­go­ing cri­sis in West Asia that has re­sult­ed in in­ter­na­tion­al air­space re­stric­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port by ES­P­N­cricin­fo, the Windies along with South Africa are now sched­uled to de­part ear­ly on Tues­day, fol­low­ing re­ports that the Eng­land team left Mum­bai on Sat­ur­day evening for Lon­don.

In an in­ter­view on i95.5 FM, Sir Clive said it was a fright­en­ing sce­nario for the play­ers to be in.

He said while it was up to the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) to re­solve the sit­u­a­tion, he sug­gest­ed that re­gion­al gov­ern­ments may have to come to­geth­er to de­vise a plan to get the team home if the ICC fails in its ef­forts.

“Well I pre­sume that they should be deal­ing with the peo­ple that in­vit­ed them there and find out the best way to get home, be­cause you don’t want to be in harm’s way, you want to get home to your fam­i­ly as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, and if oth­er teams have gone home then why are you still there.

“Sure­ly they should be able to char­ter a flight and get the play­ers home. You have to look af­ter your play­ers; safe­ty is im­por­tant. Most of the guys are mar­ried, have kids and so on, so they would be wor­ried. They don’t want to have that sit­u­a­tion,” Sir Clive said.

“It is a bad look for the West In­dies, be­cause if every­body is go­ing home and you’re the on­ly team left there, you would think that some­thing is wrong. Is it that they’re short of cash? It means that the gov­ern­ments should get in­volved and get peo­ple home.”

(CMC)