Rajasthan Royals spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has been fined 25 per cent of his match fee for criticising the umpiring after their match against Chennai Super Kings on Wednesday.

Ashwin was fined for breaching Article 2.7 of the IPL’s code of conduct, which relates to “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”.

After the Royals’ pulled off a tense win, Ashwin, at the media conference, said that he had been left puzzled by the umpires’ decision to change the ball on their own because of the dew. “I’m quite surprised the umpires changed the ball for dew on their own. It has never happened before and I’m quite surprised. Some of the decisions in this year’s IPL on the field have left me a little flummoxed to be honest,” the off-spinner said.

“I mean, (it) left me flummoxed in a good or a bad way. It’s because I think what you need is a little bit of balance,” he said. “As a bowling team, we did not ask for the ball to be changed. The ball was changed on the umpires’ accord. So I just hope every time there is dew, they can change it going forward in this IPL.”

Written with inputs from PTI