Cultural misunderstanding: Sydney Sixers captain Henriques downplays Babar-Smith ‘run denial’ episode

Sydney Sixers captain Moises Henriques clarified that the incident involving Babar Azam and Steve Smith during a BBL 2026 match against Sydney Thunder last week was a case of ‘misunderstanding of culture.’

Smith denied Babar a single off the last ball of the 11th over during the Sixers’ chase as he wanted to be on strike for ‘Power Surge’ over. The Aussie batter then went onto plunder 32 runs from that over.

Babar, who was batting on 47 from 38 balls, was visibly angered after this phase of play and was seen hitting the boundary marker with his bat on the way to the dugout after he was dismissed. Sixers went on to win the match with Smith scoring a hundred.

“It took a couple of days for that to settle down,” Henriques told Fox Cricket on Tuesday. “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.”

The Pakistani batter has struggled to make an impact in his maiden stint in the Big Bash League, scoring just 202 runs from 11 matches at a feeble strike rate of 103.06.

“[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,” added Henriques.

Published on Jan 20, 2026