NEW DELHI: India's vanquished cricketers returned home on Sunday after a demoralising tour of Australia during which they were whitewashed in the Test series and proved no good in the ODI triseries that followed. Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar and Rahul Sharma arrived at the Indira Gandhi International airport from Brisbane via Singapore early Sunday morning.
The players landed much later then their scheduled arrival and chose to make quiet exits from the airport without talking to the waiting media persons.
The Mumbai-based group of Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan and Umesh Yadav arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, while spinner Ravichandran Ashwin landed in Chennai on Saturday.
Tendulkar, Zaheer, Sharma and Yadav had separated from rest of the squad at Singapore to take a connecting flight to Mumbai.
As soon as Sri Lanka pipped Australia at the post in the last league match of the triseries 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, with bases in Gujarat, will leave for home on Sunday.
The Indians were not exactly glued in front of their TV screens on Friday to watch the outcome of the Australia-Sri Lanka match which the latter won by nine runs in the final over.
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 to take part in 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.
India had a disastrous tour of Australia losing the Test series 0-4 and failing to make the finals of the triangular ODIs.
