Team India comes home to a quiet welcome

Indian cricketers returned home on Sunday after a demoralising tour of Australia during which they were whitewashed in the Test series and made an early exit in the ODI tri-series that followed.

Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar and Rahul Sharma arrived here at the Indira Gandhi International airport from Brisbane via Singapore early in the morning.

The players landed much later than their scheduled arrival and chose to make quiet exits from the airport without talking to the waiting mediapersons.

The Mumbai-based group of Sachin Tendulkar, Rohit Sharma, Zaheer Khan and Umesh Yadav had arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, while spinner Ravichandran Ashwin landed in Chennai on Saturday.

Tendulkar, Zaheer, Sharma and Yadav had separated from the rest of the squad at Singapore to take a connecting flight to Mumbai.

As soon as Sri Lanka dumped India out of the tournament after their win over Australia in Melbourne on Friday night, the reservation plans were put afoot and the Indian players lost little time in leaving for home.

Irfan Pathan and Parthiv Patel, who are based in Gujarat, will leave for home on Sunday.

While Zaheer and Yadav have been rested for India's next engagement - the Asia Cup in Bangladesh - Tendulkar and Rohit are part of the squad for the event commencing March 11.

Rohit has also been named in the Mumbai squad to take part in the Vijay Hazare Trophy one-day inter-zonal tournament in Delhi from next week.