Ravichandran Ashwin recently narrated a lighthearted yet cautionary tale of how he almost got caught in a cricketing scam. The veteran spinner revealed
that someone pretending to be his Chennai Super Kings teammate Devon Conway reached out to him shortly after the 2025 IPL season wrapped up.
At first, Ashwin played along, even wishing "Conway" luck for his upcoming stint in Major League Cricket. But things took a strange turn when the impostor began asking for the personal phone numbers of star cricketers. First came a request for Virat Kohli's number - which Ashwin cleverly replaced with a different one. Then came questions about Rohit Sharma and MS Dhoni.
Smelling something fishy, Ashwin decided to test the so-called Conway by bringing up a bat he claimed to have given him during the IPL. The scammer's response was unconvincing - a fabricated story about a bat that never existed. That was all the proof Ashwin needed to block the number immediately.
Later, he checked the official CSK group chat and confirmed his suspicion: Devon Conway's real number was nothing like the one from the scammer. Reflecting on the situation, Ashwin chuckled,
"The guy took a chance. I went back to the CSK group and checked Devon Conway's number, and it was not the same. At least I had the smarts to send the duplicate card of Virat. It was his WhatsApp number in Australia. Thank goodness, because he was asking for everybody's numbers. "
Interestingly, there was another unrelated mix-up involving cricketers' phone calls recently. Two men - Manish Bisi and his friend Khemraj - ended up answering unexpected calls from Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers after buying a SIM card that once belonged to Rajat Patidar. Initially thinking these calls were some kind of prank (Patidar's photo appeared on WhatsApp), they were stunned when Patidar himself called on July 15 asking for his number back. The matter soon escalated to police involvement before it was cleared up.
