Delhi Capitals captain Rishabh Pant has been suspended for a match after his team maintained a slow over-rate during Match 56 of the TATA Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 against Rajasthan Royals. This means that DC can have a hard time in maintaining their position on the points table, DC are currently fifth in the IPL table with 12 points from as many games.
Pant will be missing the match against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), which is scheduled for Sunday, May 12. The release by IPL stated, “As it was his team’s third offence of the season under the IPL’s Code of Conduct relating to minimum over-rate offences, Rishabh Pant was fined INR 30 Lac and suspended for one match. The rest of the members of the Playing XI, including the Impact Player, were each individually fined either INR 12 Lac or 50 per cent of their respective match fees, whichever is lesser.”
“As per Article 8 of the IPL Code of Conduct, the Delhi Capitals filed an appeal challenging the ruling of the Match Referee. Following this, the appeal was referred to the BCCI Ombudsman for review. The Ombudsman conducted a virtual hearing and affirmed that the decision of the Match Referee remains final and binding,” the statement read.
This was the third offence of the season for DC under the IPL’s Code of Conduct relating to minimum over-rate offences. Earlier, on April 4, Pant was fined Rs 24 lakh for a second over-rate offence in Match 16 of the 17th season of IPL against the Kolkata Knight Riders in Vizag. Before that, DC maintained a slow over rate in a match against Chennai Super Kings at the same venue and Pant was fined Rs 12 lakh.
DC had filed an appeal challenging the ruling of the match referee Daniel Manohar. The matter was then referred to the BCCI Ombudsman for review. After conducting a virtual hearing, the Ombudsman affirmed that the decision of the match referee remains final and binding.
Pant, DC head coach Ricky Ponting, Director of Cricket Sourav Ganguly were present for the hearing which was also attended by BCCI CEO Hemang Amin and the match referee.
In context to the situation, Pant contested by saying that the delay was also caused due to the fact that the match day was the hottest day in Delhi and thus the heat was a major contributing factor in the slow over-rate.
He further submitted that the review involving the dismissal of RR captain Sanju Samson consumed approximately 5-6 minutes and thus the 3-minute allowances granted in lieu of the same is inadequate.
Saurav Ganguly added to the situation by saying that, during the course of the innings of RR, 13 sixes were hit by their batters but the consequential Ball Retrieval Allowance of 0.30 minutes has only been granted on three occasions to DC, and the three minutes allowance granted for the review of the dismissal of Samson was insufficient, which consumed extra time, and the dismissal involved a review time of more than 3 minutes.