Henriques: 'It took a couple of days' for Babar to get over denied single

Sydney Sixers captain Moises Henriques has revealed that Babar Azam was "quite upset" after Steven Smith denied him a single to keep the strike for the following over in the game against Sydney Thunder, but believes the emotions stemmed for a cultural misunderstanding.

Smith wanted to have a go for the first over of the power surge, targeting a short boundary, and when Babar knocked the last ball of the 11th over to long-on, Smith did not take the run available. Smith ended up taking a BBL record 32 runs off the over against Ryan Hadley.

Then, on the final ball of the 12th over, Smith was reluctant to run a second but eventually did. That meant Babar had the strike against Nathan McAndrew for the start of the 13th over. But Babar edged an attempted heave across the line onto his stumps first ball, and was clearly angered as he walked off, striking the boundary marker with his bat.

He remained in the dressing room for the remainder of the game and after the match when players mingled on the outfield.

"It took a couple of days for that to settle down," Henriques told Fox Cricket during the Qualifier final against Perth Scorchers. "To be honest, think it's just a bit of a misunderstanding of culture of each other.

"It's a pretty common thing in our culture, and maybe for him (Babar) he wasn't used to it and didn't quite understand. Once it was explained to him he was absolutely fine. They've kissed and made up and it's two of the greats back friendly again."

Henriques added that it was he and Sixers coach Greg Shipperd who took the lead role in talking to Babar. "[We are] always trying to understand…we could visibly see he was quite upset with what happened on the field, so we needed to try and understand why he felt that way. Once we got to the bottom of it, it was okay."

Speaking before the game against Brisbane Heat, Smith had said, "He's good, we chatted before. I thought he batted really nicely the other night, we had a good partnership and put on a few."

Brought in as one of the biggest names at the BBL, Babar has endured a difficult campaign. He has scored 202 runs in 11 games at a strike rate of 103.06. That miserable run continued into Tuesday as Babar was dismissed for a duck off the second ball of Sixers' chase of 148 against Scorchers in the BBL Qualifier.