Steven Smith Denied A Single To Babar Azam: In the 37th match of the Big Bash League 2025-26, an incident happened between Sydney Sixers and Sydney Thunder at the Sydney Cricket Ground, which caught everyone's attention. During the match, Steve Smith refused to take a single on the last ball of the 11th over, due to which his fellow batsman Babar Azam looked very angry. The video of this incident is going viral on social media, which has surprised everyone.

Steve Smith insulted Azam?

This incident with Babar Azam happened during the 11th over of Sydney Sixers, when the team was chasing the target of 190 runs.

During this period, Steve Smith was batting very explosively. But Babar's strike rate was much lower than him. At the same time, Babar had played three consecutive dot balls in that over and was looking for a single to rotate the strike on the last ball. But Smith did not take the run, due to which it was clear from Babar's face that he was upset.

“They've said no run to that.”

Steve Smith knocked a run back off the bat of Babar Azam, so he could have the strike for the Power Surge! #BBL15 pic.twitter.com/BaZET2UF2t

— KFC Big Bash League (@BBL) January 16, 2026

The reason for this decision of Steve Smith was the rule of Power Surge.

Actually, there is a power surge rule in BBL, in which after the initial 4 over powerplay, the batting team can choose another powerplay of 2 overs anytime after the 11th over of the innings. Where only two fielders are placed outside the 30-yard circle. In such a situation, Steve Smith wanted to take advantage of this and something similar was seen. Steve Smith scored 30 runs in the 12th over of the innings and collected a total of 32 runs. However, Babar still appeared angry even after this.

Bad condition of Pakistani players in BBL

This is not the first time in BBL that Pakistani players have had to face insult.

Earlier, in the second match of the season, Pakistan's star fast bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi was removed from bowling in the middle of the over. He bowled only 2.4 overs in his spell and gave away 43 runs, that too without taking any wicket. During that time, the umpire stopped him from bowling further because he bowled two high full toss balls in the third over. On the other hand, a few days ago Mohammad Rizwan was suddenly retired out while batting, due to his slow batting. Due to which he also suffered a lot of embarrassment.