T20 World Cup 2024: Team India stuck in Barbados due to Hurricane Beryl

India skipper Rohit Sharma poses with the T20 World Cup trophy in Barbados on Sunday. Pic/BCCI

It ought to have been a day of celebration, a day when the events of the past few hours would finally begin to sink in. A day of introspection and sustained high-fives. After all, the day after a World Cup triumph doesn't come around too often.

Instead, Sunday was a day of frustration for India's cricketers, still basking in their spectacular get-out-of-jail seven-run conquest of South Africa in the final of the T20 World Cup.

As Bridgetown and the southeastern Caribbean island of Barbados, literally battened down the hatches in anticipation of Hurricane Beryl, Rohit Sharma and his men endured the uncertainty of when they would be given the all-clear to fly back home to soak in the affection, adulation and adoration of their millions of fans. India's cricketers aren't used to uncertainty.

Treacherous pitches

They weren't, for four weeks and eight matches, on treacherous pitches in New York and better batting surfaces in the Caribbean. Against potential banana skins Ireland and United States, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and more familiar foes including Pakistan, Australia, England and South Africa. They were sure of their approach, of their game plan, of their strategies, of their own strengths, of what they were capable of doing. They were sure of the fact that if they played to their full potential, no one would be able to prevent them from keeping their tryst with destiny.

Also Read: T20 World Cup 2024 | Hardik Pandya: The man who stayed under the headlines!

There have been mischievous, motivated whispers in various quarters that this World Cup was set up for India to win. Of course, it was. That's why India played their group matches in New York, on drop-in pitches made in Adelaide which would have been deemed dangerous in a non-World Cup international, one suspects. That's why they air-dashed straight from the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, well aware that lack of attention to detail would ensure their match against Canada in Fort Lauderdale would be a non-starter despite no rain for 21 hours before the start. That's why they played three Super 8 matches in five days in three different islands. That's why all their matches began at 10.30 am here - a time at which they haven't played a white-ball game for nearly a decade-and-a-half. The tongues will wag, and the rumour mills will churn unchecked, but they can't hide the fact that India were the best team in the competition, the first nation to go unbeaten at a T20 World Cup. Fortified by the presence of the best bowler in the world, the man who overturned certain defeat with the opposition needing 30 off 30, six wickets in hand, to the most extraordinary seven-run heist.

Bumrah is world's best

No one, not even the magnificent Rohit, was anywhere near as influential as Jasprit Bumrah, the man with the golden arm, the Player of the Tournament. Sunday night through Monday morning, Hurricane Beryl made landfall, disrupted power lines and hurled winds in excess of 80 kmph. But even that intensity couldn't matched Bumrah's or India's. Now, just the long flight back home, whenever that is, remains. With the World Cup in tow, no less.

Bravo!

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No. of years after which India won an ICC trophy