Australian Cricket Team And Staff Land Back In Sydney After Being Stranded In India

The Australian cricket team and staff have landed back on home turf after being stranded in India for weeks.

9News showed live images of their plane touching down at Sydney Airport this morning (May 17).

There has been a massive effort to get them home as India continues to endure a catastrophic wave of coronavirus infections and deaths.

The country has seen more than 280,000 new cases in the last 24 hours alone and nearly 4,100 deaths in the same time period.

Australia's national team and their staff were among the more than 9,000 Aussies who were caught in the government's travel ban.

Scott Morrison's government declared back in April that they would be halting all flights coming from India to ensure there isn't an outbreak of virus cases here.

It was a policy that divided opinion and many felt it was unfair against Aussie citizens who were desperate to get home.

The first repatriation flight landed in Darwin on May 15 and passengers were forced to spend their two weeks in quarantine in the Northern Territory city.

Forty passengers had to be turned away from the flight last minute after they tested positive for the coronavirus. That left just 80 people who were allowed to fly.

While many will be happy the 38 cricket players and staff are safe back in Australia, there has been mixed reaction on social media .

Some have called out the disparity in the team being allowed to fly into Sydney and complete their quarantine there rather than in the Top End.

9News reports Cricket Australia made a deal with the New South Wales government to let them fly into Sydney via Kuala Lumpur after spending the last two weeks in the Maldives.

Cricket Australia says it hasn't many any special exemption requests for their quarantine measures.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says they will be treated like any other Australian.

Now that the group has landed, they will be loaded onto buses and taken to various quarantine hotels in Sydney.

Topics: Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie