Agencies
New Delhi, Mar 6:
Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his young bravehearts, who created history by winning India's first-ever tri-series title on Australian soil, arrived to a tumultuous welcome in Delhi with hundreds of fans cheering the cricket team. The team, which reached Mumbai in the morning, flew into the national capital by a chartered flight at around 2.05 pm, marking the end of a three-month-long explosive tour which made more headlines for a racism row and the constant bickerings between the two teams.
A few hundred fans waited outside the airport to have a glimpse of Dhoni and his young warriors who defied all odds to conquer world champions Australia with a 2-0 margin in the best-of-three tri-series finals.
Top officials of the Cricket Board and the Delhi and District Cricket Association were present at the airport to receive the team.
It was an emotional home-coming for the players as the waiting fans, many of them holding placards and the Tricolour, cheered them lustily as they came out of a Indira Gandhi International Airport terminal in a flower-bedecked bus.
The frenzied media and the fans, however, could not interact and a have close glimpse of their heroes as the bus drove straightaway for the hotel without even stopping at the gate.
Even the information of which terminal they are arriving kept on changing apparently due to security reasons and newspersons had to hurry from domestic arrival terminal to the cargo terminal of the IGI Airport at the last moment. The players, dressed in white T-shirts, acknowledged the cheers of the crowd as they jostled their way out of the airport with the help of securitymen who tried to cordon off the fans.
Hordes of cameramen, who had taken up vantage positions much before the team's arrival, tried to capture the moment. It took some time for all the players and the support staff to board the bus and leave for a city hotel. Team manager Lalchand Rajput was the first to get down from the bus at the hotel, followed by Sachin Tendulkar and captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
They were garlanded and showered with flower petals once they entered the hotel lobby. The team is being felicitated at a civic reception at the Ferozeshah Kotla ground.
The players are being felicitated by, among others, BCCI chief Sharad Pawar and Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Tejinder Khanna. The BCCI had initially planned to take the team on an open-top bus from the airport to the Ferozeshah Kotla like they had done for the Twenty20 World Cup winning team in Mumbai last year, but cancelled the idea later.
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