© GettyDavid Warner of Australia arrives wearing a face mask
A group of Australian cricketers and support staff have arrived in Sydney on a private flight after fleeing the COVID-19 crisis in India via the Maldives.
The cohort of more than 30 people, including cricketers Pat Cummins and David Warner, touched down at Sydney's international airport at 7.30am on Monday.
The Air Seychelles Airbus A320-251N flew from the Maldives to Perth on Saturday and refueled overnight. A row of Murrays coaches lined up at the airport on Monday, bound for hotel quarantine.
On May 6, Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers' Association confirmed the players, coaches, match officials and commentators had been "safely transported" from India to the Maldives, and would remain there until the federal government's travel ban lifted on May 15.
The group had been in India for the Indian Premier League, postponed earlier this month after the tournament's biosecurity bubble burst when a number of people tested positive for COVID-19.
Nine News reports the arrivals will be spread across a number of Sydney hotels for their mandatory 14-day quarantine.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in Queensland on Sunday, was asked whether the returning cricketing group had requested any "special dispensation" and whether they had been given any.
"They haven't been given any, I can tell you that, and they'll come in additional to the cap in NSW," he said.
"That's something we insisted upon and they were happy to agree with that. But they'll come back under their own steam, on their own ticket, and ... they won't be taking the spot in quarantine of any other Australian who is returning home under the NSW caps."
Mr Morrison noted NSW, which has a cap of 430 daily overseas arrivals, had done the "heavy lifting".
"The NSW government and [Premier] Gladys Berejiklian in particular has been so strong in supporting those higher caps, but in this case, ensuring that when the cricketers come back they don't take the spot of anybody else," he said.
Thousands of citizens remain stranded in India. The first repatriation flight since the ban was lifted landed in Darwin on Saturday with 80 of its estimated 150 scheduled passengers. More than 70 were barred from flying after either testing positive ahead of the flight or being listed as a close contact.