Man ends up receiving calls from Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers after being assigned Rajat Patidar's old number: Reports

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) captain and batting star Rajat Patidar found himself in a bizarre chain of events, involving his old phone number, two cricket fans and local law personnel. Although it initially appeared to be a routine telecom matter, it escalated into an intriguing story, prompting Patidar to take help from police force.

As per a report by NDTV, the right-handed batter's previous mobile number had been inactive for 90 days and his telecom provider had re-assigned it to other person. A boy named Manish, belonging to Gariaband district of Chhattisgarh, had purchased the SIM and activated it in late June. Shortly after activating it, Manish and one of his friends Khemraj noticed Patidar's photo bizarrely appearing on Whatsapp's profile image for the new number.

The number soon started receiving calls from the likes of Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, who attempted to contact the RCB skipper. The Royal Challengers' captain himself attempted to contact Manish to regain his old number as he underlined the importance of it by mentioning that he had numbers of his coaches and teammates. After Manish refused to believe it was actually the star cricketer on the line, the RCB batter had reportedly warned him that he will call the police.

The local police had reached out to Manish almost immediately as the latter co-operated by returning the SIM card to its rightful owner.

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Rajat Patidar won the IPL trophy in his debut season as captain

Rajat Patidar. (Image Credits: Getty)

On the cricketing side of things, the Indore-born cricketer hit a season-high in IPL 2025 after replacing Faf du Plessis as the captain of the Royal Challengers. Despite his first stint as IPL captain, the 32-year-old performed exceedingly well, securing landmark wins over Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians.

He also struck 312 runs in 15 matches as RCB defeated Punjab Kings (PBKS) by six runs in the final in Ahmedabad to lift the title. As a result, RCB ended their 18-year-old title drought.