ICC punishes Gill for weighing in on Green catch

The International Cricket Council has punished India batter Shubman Gill for his social media post on Cameron Green’s day-four catch, while both India and Australia have been handed hefty over-rate penalties from the World Test Championship final.

Gill, who tweeted his disapproval of television umpire Richard Kettleborough’s decision to give him out on a low-down catch in the gully by Green on Saturday, has been fined 15 per cent of his match fee for breaching the ICC code of conduct, the governing body confirmed today.

The opening batter accepted the sanction for breaching the code of conduct article relating to “public criticism of, or inappropriate comment in relation to an incident occurring in an international match.”

India captain Rohit Sharma has, for now, however appeared to have escaped sanction for his own criticism of the officiating in his post-match press conference on Sunday.

Gill’s punishment comes as India’s players were docked 100 per cent of their match fees anyway for being found to be five overs short out of their over rate.

Given the penalties, it leaves Gill in the possibly unprecedented situation of having to pay 15 per cent of what his match fee would have been back to the ICC.

That will be off-set somewhat by the US$800,000 runners-up prize-money India will share.

Likewise, Australia’s $1.6m winners purse means their own over-rate penalty of 80 per cent of their match fees is off-set considerably. The Aussies, who won the Test by 209 runs, were found to be four overs short.

Neither Rohit nor his counterpart Pat Cummins contested the charge.

Rohit doubled down on criticising Kettleborough on Sunday, suggesting that not enough camera angles were evaluated when he was judging the fairness of the catch of his opening partner Gill.

But Cummins backed up Green's insistence that he had taken the grab cleanly. The allrounder plucked the ball above the turf before falling on his side and grounding the ball on the grass.

Kettleborough deemed that Green had control of the ball with his index and middle fingers at that moment, with the Laws of Cricket stating a catch is fair if "the ball is held in the hand or hands of a fielder, even if the hand holding the ball is touching the ground".

Green was subjected to cries of 'cheat' from India supporters on days four and five following the contentious moment, but Cummins suggested Kettleborough made the right call.

"Passionate fans, but I thought it was a fair catch," Cummins said after Australia's maiden WTC title triumph.

"We're just players, we're out on the field so we leave it in the umpire's hands and personally, (Kettleborough) probably is the best umpire in the world, he knows the rule books, he's seen every angle.

"I'd probably back his decision more so than emotional, passionate fans that are looking on a big screen from 100 metres away."

Rohit, who observed the catch from the non-striker's end, made no effort to hide his displeasure over the decision either at the time or when speaking to reporters the following day.

He let out a cry of frustration once the decision was confirmed on day four, before querying the on-field officials as the players walked off for the tea break.

The dismissal had ended a rapid opening partnership that had seen Gill and Rohit blast 41 runs from the first seven overs in their unlikely fourth-innings pursuit of 444. They ended up falling 209 runs short of the target.

"The third umpire should have seen more replays," said Rohit. "I think it was three or four times he saw (replays) and he was convinced with it. It's not about whether it was given out or not out, you need to have a proper and clear information.

"That is something that I was a little disappointed with - the decision was made quite quickly.

"When a catch like that has been taken, you need to be more than 100 per cent sure because it's a final and we were at an important stage of the game as well. So that was to me a little disappointing.

"More camera angles should have been shown. There was only one or two camera angles that were shown. We've got more angles in IPL.

"We've got 10 different angles in the IPL.

"I don't know why in a world event like this, there was no ultra (slow) motion that was seen or any kind of zoomed image was seen. That is what I was a little disappointed with."

The catch was the first instance in a Test of a contentious grab being adjudicated solely by the third umpire following the scrapping of the 'soft signal' regulations earlier this year.

World Test Championship Final

June 7-11: Australia beat India by 209 runs

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey (wk), Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Travis Head, Josh Inglis (wk), Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Michael Neser, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, David Warner

India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Ishan Kishan (wk), KS Bharat (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Mohammad Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat

Find out everything you need to know for the World Test Championship Final here