CHENNAI: After a long, 10-day wait, the senior Indian men's basketball team stranded in Qatar have finally found their way home amidst the ongoing war between US-Israel and Iran early on Tuesday.
On Sunday, March 8, the team took the road from Doha to Dammam in Saudi Arabia. However, due to limited flight availability, the team travelled in two groups. "One travelled from Dammam to Jeddah to Mumbai (landing at 12:05 AM on Tuesday) and the other travelled from Dammam to Lucknow (landing at 5:15 AM on Tuesday)," the Basketball Federation of India wrote on social media.
As reported by this newspaper, the federation were in continued talks with the Indian embassy in Qatar, the FIBA Asia office & the government of India.
BFI secretary general Kulvinder Singh Gill confirmed the development to this daily. "The team left Doha on Sunday to Dammam, which took around six hours to reach. It was the Qatar Basketball federation which helped us with the travel arrangement, along with FIBA Asia. Then, the team stayed at a hotel 30 kilometres away from Dammam airport before taking their respective flights. The BFI, the Indian embassy and the external affairs ministry were in touch with the team there, too," he said.
They were not the only Indian sportspersons to be affected by the war. Women's singles ace shuttler PV Sindhu was stranded in Dubai on her way to Birmingham in England, forcing her out of the All England Badminton Open which recently concluded. She return to India last week. Indian women wrestlers were stranded in Albania after their tournament, as their return flight via Dubai got cancelled. They returned to Delhi via Kazakhstan and Turkey too.
The team had arrived to Doha to face Qatar on February 28 as part of the 2027 FIBA World Cup qualifiers (which they lost 73-99). Then the war broke out with strikes coming from both US-Israel and Iran. This prompted the governments of West Asian countries to close the airspaces, restricting travel. They were supposed to play Lebanon on March 3 in Zouk Mikael, which was postponed owing to the ongoing war. That match will be played in the next FIBA qualification window which is in June.
More to follow..