Rishabh Pant likely to be banned from one IPL match, here's why

Rishabh Pant (Pic: AFP)

Delhi Capitals captain Rishabh Pant has been fined Rs 24 lakh for a second over rate offence in IPL 2024. Pant was guilty of maintaining a slow-over in the game against Kolkata Knight Riders here on Wednesday. The rest of his teammates were fined 25 percent of their match fees.

"Rishabh Pant, the Delhi Capitals captain, has been fined after his team maintained a slow over rate during their IPL 2024 match against Kolkata Knight Riders..." said the IPL in a statement.

"As it was his team's second offence of the season under the IPL's Code of Conduct relating to minimum over rate offences, Pant was fined INR 24 lakhs. The rest of the members of the Playing XI, including the Impact Player, were each individually fined either INR 6 lakhs or 25 percent of their respective match fees, whichever is lesser," it added.

If Pant repeats the slow over rate offence, he will be then fined INR 30 lakh and also face a one-match ban, while the rest of the team will be fined 50 percent of their match fees or INR 12 lakh, whichever is lesser.

Delhi Capitals lost the game to KKR by 106 runs after the latter smashed 272 for seven, the second highest total in IPL history. It was Delhi Capitals' third loss in four games.

In a losing cause, Pant's 55 off mere 25 deliveries came out as one of the positives for DC. With this, he completed his 18th half-century for DC and became the joint second-highest fifty scorer for DC alongside Dhawan who is the current skipper of Punjab Kings.

Australia's veteran batter David Warner has the most number of half-centuries for DC with a tally of 24.

Shreyas Iyer who now leads Kolkata Knight Riders is on the third spot with 16 fifties to his name. He is level with the iconic opener Virender Sehwag who also struck 16 fifties during his time with DC.

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Pant's 55 which was laced with four boundaries and five maximums wasn't enough to take the hosts across the finishing line which led to DC suffering their second-biggest defeat by runs in the history of the tournament.

While Pant took the onus of scoring runs for the hosts, the 'City of Destiny' had already witnessed two hours of carnage, 2 hours of ruthless ball-striking and 120 minutes of torture for the Delhi Capitals (DC) bowlers as Narine (85), Raghuvanshi (54), Russell (41) and Rinku Singh's brutal-bashing helped KKR score the second highest score in the history of the IPL - 272/7.

KKR's herculean target of 273 turned out to be too much for DC as they gave in to the pressure and ended up suffering a 106-run defeat.

The pace duo of Mitchell Starc and Vaibhav Arora bagged two wickets each to reduce DC to 33/4 in the powerplay.

These couple of early blows derailed DC's approach to chasing down the massive total which got more challenging with each delivery.

Eventually, the required rate turned out to be too much as they ended up suffering a 106-run defeat.