Sri Lanka have been fined five per cent of their match fee for maintaining a slow over-rate in Thursday’s one-day international against England in Lahore, the International Cricket Council has confirmed.
The sanction was imposed by Jeff Crowe of the Emirates ICC Elite Panel of Match Referees after Sri Lanka were ruled to be one over short of the target once time allowances had been taken into account, Hiru News reported at 7:09 a.m. Colombo time on Sunday.
Under Article 2.22 of the ICC Code of Conduct for Players and Player Support Personnel, which covers minimum over-rate offences, sides are fined five per cent of their match fee for every over they fail to bowl in the allotted time.
Captain Kusal Mendis pleaded guilty to the offence and accepted the proposed sanction, so no formal hearing was required. The charge was levelled by on-field umpires Ahsan Raza and Sharfuddoula Ibne Shahid, third umpire Wayne Knights and fourth umpire Nassir Hussain.
The match
The fine relates to the sixth and final group match of the Pakistan ODI tri-series, played at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on Thursday 29 October — a dead rubber in which Sri Lanka’s place in the final was already secure and England were bottom of the table.
England won it by 55 runs, posting 386 for five on the back of a career-best 167 from Ben Duckett before bowling Sri Lanka out for 331. It was England’s only win of the tournament.
Sri Lanka went on to lose the final to Pakistan at the same ground on Saturday, beaten by three wickets after Kamindu Mendis’s maiden ODI century had taken them to 325 for eight.
This is the second such fine of the same tournament
Readers searching for this story should note that Sri Lanka were penalised twice for slow over-rates in this one tri-series, and the two cases are easily confused: both resulted in a five per cent fine, both were for being one over short, and both were imposed by Jeff Crowe.
The earlier case came in the tournament opener against Pakistan in Rawalpindi on 18 October, in which Pakistan were also fined — ten per cent, for being two overs short. The fine reported here is the separate, later one, arising from the England match in Lahore on 29 October. The discriminator is the opponent and the venue, not the penalty.
Slow over-rates have been a recurring charge against this side. Sri Lanka were fined on the same ground in the first ODI of the September series and again against the West Indies in June.
Not reported
Neither filing states the monetary value of the fine, and neither says whether any individual player was separately sanctioned or whether the penalty carries forward in any way. No response from Sri Lanka Cricket had been reported at the time of writing.
Update — the Daily Mirror corroborates the account in full
The Daily Mirror filed its own report on the fine at 8:27 a.m. Colombo time on Sunday, about an hour after Hiru. It corroborates every element of the account above without exception: the five per cent penalty, Jeff Crowe of the Emirates ICC Elite Panel, the one-over shortfall after time allowances, Article 2.22 of the Code of Conduct, Kusal Mendis’s guilty plea removing the need for a hearing, and all four match officials by name.
It also independently confirms the two details on which this story is most easily confused with the tournament’s earlier over-rate case — that the match was against England, in Lahore, on Thursday. Thursday was 29 October.
This article is now corroborated by two verified newsrooms. The note below, recording it as single-source, was accurate when the article was written at 02:40 UTC on Sunday and is retained for the record.
Single verified source (as at 02:40 UTC, 1 November). This article is carried by Hiru News, a verified newsroom, and the facts above are drawn from the ICC’s own media release of 31 October, which is the originating primary document. The ICC is not a newsroom and does not count toward this site’s credibility rating. No other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had filed on the fine at the time of writing — the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing and the NewsFirst homepage rail were both checked at 02:35 UTC on Sunday.