Ravichandran Ashwin slapped with a fine for publicly criticizing match officials after match against CSK

The star Rajasthan Royals all-rounder Ravichandran Ashwin has been fined 25 percent of his match fees for breaching the code of conduct after the match against Chennai Super Kings. Notably, Ashwin won the ‘Player of the Match award for his brilliant all-round performance both with the bat and the ball.

Apart from that, the 36-year-old was found criticizing the match officials publicly for changing the ball citing the concerns of dew factor in the ground.

"I'm quite surprised the umpires changed the ball for Dew on their own. It's never happened before and I'm quite surprised," said Ashwin during a press conference after the match against CSK.

"Some of the decisions in this year's IPL on the field have left me a little flummoxed, to be honest. It left me flummoxed in a good or bad way because what you need is a little bit of balance. We're going as a bowling team and we're not asking for the ball to be changed. But the ball was changed on the umpire's accord. What reason - I did ask the umpire but he said we can change it,” he added later.

This statement from the veteran all-rounder was found to breach article 2.7 of the code of conduct which states that, “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.”

Ravichandran Ashwin created a difference with the bat and the ball for Rajasthan Royals

Speaking of Ashwin’s performance in the nerve-jangler against MS Dhoni’s men, he first scored 30 runs off 22 balls with a boundary and two sixes with the wood. Later on, in the second innings, he also scalped two crucial wickets for the visitors by conceding only 25 runs in his quota of four overs.

Eventually, RR won the match by a close margin of 3 runs to gain the top spot in the points table of the ongoing edition of the Indian Premier League.