sydney sixers captain moises henriques It has been revealed Babar Azam Was “quite upset” after steven smith He was not given a single chance to maintain the strike for the next over in the game against sydney thunderBut he believes the feelings stemmed from a cultural misunderstanding.
Smith looked to hit short boundaries in the first over of the power surge, and when Babar bowled the last ball of the 11th over to long-on, Smith did not take the available runs. Smith made a BBL record by scoring 32 runs in the over against Ryan Hadlee.
Then, on the last ball of the 12th over, Smith was reluctant to take the second run, but eventually did so. This meant that Babar had strike against Nathan McAndrew at the start of the 13th over. But Babar attempted to cross the line with the first ball off his stumps, and was clearly angry when he walked away, hitting the boundary line with his bat.
He remained in the dressing room during the remainder of the game and after the match when the players met on the outfield.
“It took a few days to recover,” Henriques told Fox Cricket. Qualifier final against Perth Scorchers. “To be honest, it’s a bit of a misunderstanding about each other’s culture.
“It’s a very common thing in our culture, and probably for him (Babar) he was not used to it and did not understand at all. Once it was explained to him he was absolutely fine. They kissed and made up and these two great players are friendly again.”
Henriques said it was he and Sixers coach Greg Shipperd who played a key role in talking to Babar. “[We are] Always trying to understand… We could clearly see that he was quite upset about what happened on the field, so we needed to try to understand why he felt that way. Once we got to the bottom of it, everything was fine.”
Speaking before the game against Brisbane Heat, Smith had said, “He’s good, we had a chat earlier. I thought he batted really well the other night, we batted well and got a few partnerships.”
Babar, brought into the BBL as one of the biggest names, has faced a tough campaign. He has scored 202 runs in 11 matches at a strike rate of 103.06. That bad run continued on Tuesday, when Babar was out for a duck on the second ball of the Sixers’ chase of 148 against the Scorchers in the BBL Qualifier.