3 min readUpdated: Apr 11, 2026 07:41 AM IST
Ricky Ponting had barely taken three steps towards the pavilion when it landed. He stopped. He turned. He pointed his bat. The cameras at the PCA Stadium in Mohali caught it all on October 1, 2010 — but only now, speaking to The Indian Express, has Zaheer Khan filled in what the stump microphones could not.
ALSO READ | Full Zaheer Khan interview
Ponting had just been run out by a stunning direct throw from Suresh Raina, a dismissal tight enough for the third umpire and frustrating enough to make the long walk back feel even longer. As the Australian captain moved past the celebrating Indian huddle, Zaheer leaned in. The gist of it: did Ponting fancy himself as fast as the world’s greatest sprinter? or in his words, “You think you were Usain Bolt?”
“Entire huddle heard that!” Zaheer Khan tells The Indian Express.
He laughs when the moment is put to him. He confirms the sledge, that he intended Ponting carries in his mind all the way back to the dressing room.
Zaheer’s wider view of the practice, though, is rather interesting.
“Sledging is not about use of bad words. It’s using it to your advantage — and not losing yourself in the process,” he says.
That distinction matters to him. The Ponting moment and the famous ‘Jelly Bean incident’ that he also talks in the extensive interview with this newspaper now, were never about heat or hostility — they were about craft.
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Broadcast commentary that day flagged the Zaheer-to-Ponting exchange in real time. Commentators noted the animated reaction from the fielding side and described it as “very cheeky” — remarking that while competitive talk was part of the game, directing it at a batsman already walking off pushed at the edges of necessity. The umpires did not intervene.
At the time, neither camp chose to make anything of it. Pragyan Ojha, after a long day in the field, put it simply: “When two top teams go hard at each other, words get exchanged. That is cricket.” Test cricket, especially. Nothing to see beyond that.
From the Australian dressing room, Shane Watson — who had spent the day compiling a composed, unbeaten century — offered a similarly measured response. The umpires had not stepped in, he observed. And those who knew Ponting, Watson added, understood he was not someone who went looking for a fight without cause.
What softened the memory entirely, though, was what happened at stumps. As the players left the field, Zaheer and Harbhajan Singh were among those who made their way across to Watson to acknowledge his innings. The handshakes were warm. The afternoon’s friction, such as it was, had already been filed away.
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Fifteen years on, it remains one of those small, vivid footnotes that Test cricket occasionally produces — an episode that lasted about three seconds and is still funny and memorable enough to prompt a laugh.
