New Delhi: The Indian cricket team is returning on Thursday from Australia after winning their first tri-series Down Under in 23 years but there will be no open-top bus parade like the Twenty20 World Championship winning team or the Under-19 World Cup winning team.
There will be a grand felicitation ceremony for the team at the Ferozeshah Kotla later in the day. The ceremony is expected to start at around 1600 hrs IST and entry to the stadium will be free.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni's team will fly in from Australia to Mumbai from where they will be brought to Delhi by a chartered flight.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had organised an open-top bus parade for the Twenty20 World Championship winning team in Mumbai in September 2007 and the Under-19 World Cup winners in Bangalore on Tuesday.
Dhoni and his teammates will also get a Rs 10-crore award for winning the tri-series.
After a grueling and ill-tempered tour, which lasted for more than two months, India lost the Test series 2-1 but won the Commonwealth Bank tri-series defeating the world champions in the best of three finals 2-0 at Brisbane on Tuesday.
Ironically, India won the third Test at Perth, which is supposed to have the fastest pitch in the world and ruined Ricky Ponting’s chances of leading Australia to a new world record of 17 straight Test wins.
The tour was marred by many on-field and off-field controversies, which threatened to derail the tour and split the cricket world.
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