South Africa’s (SA) cricket team, stranded in India because of international airspace closure, will\u00a0begin to fly home on Wednesday, with the \u200centire contingent departing in the next 36 hours, the\u00a0International Cricket Council (ICC)\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
They are one of several including West Indies\u00a0\u200b<\/span>stuck because of conflict in the Middle East long\u00a0\u200b<\/span>after their Twenty20 World Cup campaigns ended while\u00a0\u2060<\/span>the ICC struggled to charter flights to repatriate them.<\/p>\n England\u00a0flew home two days after being beaten in the\u00a0semi-finals, prompting criticism of the\u00a0ICC from SA and West Indian camps.<\/p>\n The ICC, in a statement on Wednesday, said the\u00a0criticism was “incorrect” and provided an update on\u00a0SA’s\u00a0return.<\/p>\n “On current arrangements, the SA contingent will begin departing \u200cfor\u00a0\u2060<\/span>SA tonight, with all members expected to have departed within the next 36 hours,” it said.<\/p>\n “The ICC rejects any suggestion that these decisions have been driven by\u00a0anything other\u00a0than safety, feasibility\u00a0\u2060<\/span>and welfare.”<\/p>\n “Throughout this period, the ICC’s overriding priority has been the safety and\u00a0welfare of everyone affected,” it said.<\/p>\n “We will not\u00a0move\u00a0\u2060<\/span>people until we are satisfied that the travel solution in place is safe, and that commitment will not change.”<\/p>\n Cricket\u00a0\u2060<\/span>West\u00a0Indies said on Tuesday it\u00a0had booked commercial flights to take home its contingent in three groups.<\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":24085,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-28345","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"SA cricket team, stranded in India","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/28345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/28345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28346,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/28345\/revisions\/28346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=28345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}