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Zaheer Khan says Ashish Nehra inspires him, explains how he sledged and how he got named 'Gyan Baba'

Zaheer Khan was speaking at a promotional for a talk show

Zaheer Khan and Virender Sehwag had an entertaining chat at a promotional event for celebrity chat show ‘What The Duck’ in Mumbai on Thursday. Cricket humorist Vikram Sathaye, who will be hosting the show, started the discussion off, which took some serious turns but was mostly had in a light vein.

Zaheer said, “I should take some tips from Nehra on how to survive for so long. It’s not easy to comeback at this stage in the career and he’s doing well which is amazing. He has motivated me to train. I got hope to train for IPL.”

Before making a formal announcement of retirement last year, he had turned up to play for Delhi Daredevils in the later stages of the 2015 IPL, and so a surprise comeback may not be completely out of the picture.

On being asked to explain how he got the name ‘Gyan Baba’ in the Indian dressing room, Zaheer grinned and said, “I can’t stop myself but going up to bowlers and always giving them advice, that’s how it came into existence I think.”

Virender Sehwag, the other cricketer to have been roped in for the talk show, chipped in helpfully at this stage, revealing that it had been Zaheer who had advised for Sehwag to be made an opener. Sehwag was given a promotion to the opener’s slot from the middle order during the tour of England in 2002, a decision which would prove to have deep consequences in shaping cricket history.

Sehwag said, “All credit goes to Zaheer and because of him I was able to score 8000 (exact 8568 runs) Test runs. End of the day he was the ‘Gyan Baba’, he was advising Ganguly also.”

Could pick up more wickets with way I sledged: Zaheer

Zaheer also held forth on how he went about sledging during his India playing days. He said that he found different ways to sledge, instead of simply abusing the batsmen.

“Sledging always doesn’t mean that you have to go and use bad words.  When I was playing on the field, I always used to find ways of disrupting the batsman’s concentration for those 30 seconds when he bats. When he does that you give yourself a better chance. That way I ended up picking wickets.”

It was also pointed out by the host that in this time of frequent news of marriages of Indian cricket team members, Zaheer is the only player who took the plunge into matrimony after retiring.

By way of explanation, the ace pacer said, “Fast bowling in the sub-continent is very tough. I knew I could focus on only one thing at a time. It was either bowling or getting married, having kids and running after them. So I thought I better run after the wicket and bowl.”

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