By IANS
Dubai : India’s Gautam Gambhir has been fined 65 percent of his one-day international (ODI) match fee and Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi 95 percent of his total fee for their verbal clash during the third match in Kanpur Sunday, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced here Wednesday.
ICC match referee Roshan Mahanama, a former Sri Lanka Test batsman, handed down the punishments, following hearings in Gwalior, India, Wednesday.
“Gambhir has been fined a total of 65 percent of his match fee while Afridi’s fine comes to a total of 95 percent of his match fee,” ICC said in a statement here.
It said that the players were each charged under two counts of the ICC Code of Conduct pertaining to “…conduct unbecoming to their status, which could bring them or the game of cricket into disrepute.”
Gambhir was fined 50 percent of his match fee for being found guilty of the offence of inappropriate and deliberate physical contact and 15 percent of his fee for the disrepute charge.
Afridi was fined 75 percent of his match fee for the offence of inappropriate and deliberate physical contact and 20 percent of his fee for the disrepute charge.
Giving details of the incident, ICC said that Gambhir hit the third ball of an Afridi over for four and there was then a verbal exchange between the two players.
Then, Gambhir looked to work the next ball on the onside. The ball deflected out onto the off side, Gambhir took a single and, in the process, the batsman and bowler collided.
A heated altercation took place between the two players that forced umpire Ian Gould of England, standing at the bowler’s end, to pacify the players.
“Both players pleaded not guilty to the charges but even if the collision between them was viewed as an accident I still felt it was inappropriate,” Mahanama said.
“On top of that, there was a build up to that incident and then they stood toe-to-toe arguing in mid-pitch immediately afterwards. It is not the sort of example that players should be setting at any time, least of all in a series as high profile as this one.”
The hearing involving Afridi was attended by him as well as Pakistan team manager Talit Ali and captain Shoaib Malik while the Indian team manager Lalchand Rajput and captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni attended Gambhir’s hearing besides the left-handed batsman.