By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
World Test Championship (WTC) finalists India and Australia have been hit with heavy fines by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for maintaining a slow over rate upon the culmination of the one-off contest at The Oval.
According to Article 2.22 of the ICC Code of Conduct for Players and Player Support Personnel, players are fined 20 per cent of their match fee for every over if their team fails to bowl within the allotted time frame.
This resulted in the Indian team forfeiting all their match fees, with Australia losing 80 per cent of their match fees.
Shubman Gill has also been fined 15 percent of his match fee for criticising the TV umpire’s decision.
Gill was on 18 in the second innings in India’s chase of 444 when he edged Scott Boland low to the left of gully where Cameron Green dived to catch that. Gill didn’t walk off immediately and the on-field umpires went up to the third umpire without a soft signal as per the new protocol. Third umpire Richard Kettleborough looked at the replay from various angles before ruling it out.
Gill then took to social media and tweeted a screenshot of a zoomed front-on photo of Green taking the catch and captioned it with a couple of magnifying glass emojis and a facepalm emoji. He also went on to post a story on Instagram with emojis of clapping hands.
The ICC charged him for breaching Article 2.7 which relates to “public criticism or inappropriate comment in relation to an incident occurring in an international match”. Gill accepted the sanction so there was no need for a formal hearing.
The fifth day of the final of WTC concluded with India ending up as runner-ups as they lost seven wickets right in the first session.
Australia secured the title of champions by defeating India by 209 runs at The Oval.