Rajasthan Royals (RR) off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has been fined 25 percent of his match fee for breaching the IPL code of conduct during his team’s clash against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at MA Chidambaram Stadium on Wednesday (April 12).
Ashwin was reprimanded for violating Article 2.7 of the IPL’s code of conduct during the match, which turned out to be a nail-biter with RR defeating CSK by three runs.
“Ashwin admitted to the Level 1 Offence under Article 2.7 of the IPL’s Code of Conduct. For Level 1 breaches of the Code of Conduct, the Match Referee’s decision is final and binding,” a statement from the IPL said.
While the statement didn’t mention the nature of offence, the Article 2.7 of the IPL’s code of conduct relates to “public criticism of, or inappropriate comment in relation to an incident occurring in a match or any player, team official, match official or team participating in any match, irrespective of when such criticism or inappropriate comment is made”.
Notably, Ashwin had expressed “surprised” over the umpires' decision to change the ball because of the dew during the match.
The heavy dew at Chepauk prompted the umpires to change the ball on their own in the chase, and Ashwin called for consistency while taking such calls.
"I'm quite surprised the umpires changed the ball for dew on their own. It's never happened before and I'm quite surprised. Some of the decisions in this year's IPL on the field have left me a little flummoxed to be honest," Ashwin said at the post-match press conference.
"I mean, (it) left me flummoxed in a good or a bad way. It's because I think what you need is a little bit of balance.
"As a bowling team, we are not asking for the ball to be changed. But the ball was changed on the umpires' accord. I did ask the umpire and he said we can change it.
"So I just hope every time there is dew they can change it every single time going forward in this IPL that sort of, you can do whatever you want, but you just need to be in a standard going forward," he added.
(With PTI Inputs)
