Ravichandran Ashwin had an interesting experience after the IPL 2025. Ashwin, who retired from international cricket last year, said a prankster, who went by the name ‘Devon Conway’ — his ex-Chennai Super Kings teammate — nearly fooled him. “After the IPL got over, one guy messaged me, claiming to be Devon Conway, ‘Hi buddy, how are you?’ and I also responded, ‘We’ll stay in touch. You’re playing in MLC; I’ll watch the games.’ He then asked, ‘I’ve lost Virat Kohli’s number, can you share it?’ I thought, why is he asking for Virat’s number? I thought I should ask him, but I didn’t want Devon Conway to misunderstand. Then I picked up Virat Kohli’s card and gave him a different number,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.

The India spin great had a similar experience recently, when a certain ‘Zampa’ asked him for the phone numbers of Jasprit Bumrah, Sanju Samson, Rinku Singh, among others. Ashwin played a simple trick. He in turn asked ‘Zampa’ whether he had MS Dhoni’s number. To that query, the scammer shared a contact with the name ‘MS Dhoni Indian cricketer’. Then, he asked Ashwin to give him all the contacts that he had. By now, the picture was clear. Ashwin just said that he is compiling all the numbers in an excel sheet.

Recently, Ashwin, after raising questions over Harshit Rana’s selection in the Indian team for the ODI series against Australia, has now defended the pacer.

“I have always reiterated that no player should be attacked below the belt. When the attack becomes too personal, the genre changes. I would like to talk about Sanjay Manjrekar, who has criticised me throughout my career. But I have never held any grudge against him. What they say might be right or wrong, as long as the criticism doesn’t get personal, I am fine with it,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.

Ashwin said that he fully sympathises with Rana, while also calling out social media trolls for sharing negative content, adding that such attacks could shatter a player mentally.

“Assume Harshit sees the reel in which he is being harshly criticised, and he is about to play a match for India, wouldn’t he be shattered by this? And if his parents and friends see it, what will be their mindset? We can definitely criticise their skill, their style of cricket and the trade that they are plying. But it shouldn’t get personal. It may be funny once or twice, but it shouldn’t be a running theme. The reason they are doing this is that there is an audience for it. Negativity sells these days. They sell whatever is in demand. We should avoid consuming such content,” he added.