KOLKATA, In­dia – Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has been forced to aban­don plans for an ICC-or­gan­ised char­ter flight and se­cure com­mer­cial trav­el for its squad mem­bers strand­ed in In­dia, end­ing a nine-day wait that had be­come “in­creas­ing­ly dis­tress­ing” for play­ers and staff.

In a state­ment re­leased on Tues­day, CWI con­firmed that af­ter re­peat­ed de­lays to char­ter arrange­ments han­dled by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC), it was no longer pru­dent to wait.

The char­ter, in­tend­ed to trans­port both the West In­dies and South Africa teams home fol­low­ing their in­volve­ment in ICC events, was hit by on­go­ing un­cer­tain­ty stem­ming from glob­al ten­sions and avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tions.

“As is cus­tom­ary for both men’s and women’s ICC World Cups, all trav­el and ac­com­mo­da­tion arrange­ments for par­tic­i­pat­ing teams are co­or­di­nat­ed and man­aged by the ICC,” the CWI state­ment not­ed.

How­ev­er, with the squad hav­ing al­ready spent nine days in In­dia af­ter com­plet­ing their play­ing com­mit­ments, pa­tience wore thin.

“The on­go­ing un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the ICC-or­gan­ised char­ter made the sit­u­a­tion in­creas­ing­ly dis­tress­ing,” CWI ex­plained.

“In the in­ter­est of the well-be­ing and safe­ty of its play­ers and sup­port staff, Crick­et West In­dies ad­vised the ICC that it was no longer pru­dent to con­tin­ue wait­ing.”

Mul­ti­ple ap­proach­es have since been made through CWI, play­ers, and oth­er part­ners, in co­or­di­na­tion with the ICC, to se­cure com­mer­cial trav­el to fa­cil­i­tate the squad’s safe re­turn.

Some mem­bers of the tour­ing par­ty have al­ready de­part­ed, with the re­main­ing con­tin­gent sched­uled to fly out on Tues­day, March 10, and Wednes­day, March 11.

CWI ex­pressed grat­i­tude to fans and stake­hold­ers for their con­cern through­out the or­deal, thank­ing every­one for their sup­port and pa­tience as the sit­u­a­tion was fi­nal­ly re­solved.

CMC