Team India has been fined 40% of their match fee for maintaining a slow over-rate in the third and final ODI against South Africa in Cape Town. Match Referee Andy Pycroft has imposed the sanction on the base of the charges levelled by on-field umpires Marais Erasmus and Bongani Jele, third umpire Allauhudien Palekar and fourth umpire Adrien Holdstock as well.
However, India were found two overs short of the target after the time allowances came into consideration. According to Article 2.22 of the ICC Code of Conduct for Players and Player Support Personnel, which talks about minimum over-rate offences, players are fined 20 per cent of their match fee for every over the team that fails to bowl in the allotted time as well.
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KL Rahul, the Team India captain, was found guilty of the offence and hence there was no need for a hearing too as well. However, this was the second time against South Africa that India had breached the overrate rules. South Africa too faced that after the second ODI in Paarl after Temba Bavuma’s team was an over short of target.
However, after the defeat, KL Rahul said: “Deepak gave us a real chance of winning the game. Quite an exciting game, just disappointed we ended up on the losing side. We gave ourselves a real chance, something we can learn from and get better. Quite obvious where we’ve gone wrong. No shying away from it. At times our shot selection has been poor. Even with the ball we haven’t been hitting the right areas consistently. Have played well in patches but haven’t built pressure over a long period.
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Can’t fault the boys for the passion and effort. In terms of skill and understanding the situation – sometimes we’ve gone wrong. But it happens – we’ve got some new guys in the team. In the one-day series at times we’ve kept doing the same mistakes. It’s early in our journey to the World Cup. We can go back, have some hard conversations. Have had a great time in SA. Have been looked after really well. We’ve shown a lot of fight.”
