Picture Credit: Twitter
Former India captain Virat Kohli has been the country’s biggest sporting star over the last decade. The Delhi-born has emerged as an inspirational figure for the youth of the nation with his on-field resilience and brilliance paired with an incredible off-field personality. These qualities have created a huge fandom surrounding the batter as one fan spent some obscene amount of money to just catch a selfie with Virat Kohli.
The name of the fan is Rahul Rai, hailing from Assam, who spent a sum of rupees 23,400 to spend a night in the same hotel where the Indian team was staying before the second T20I against South Africa in Guwahati. Rai was partially sick as he reached Lopirya Gopinath Bordoloi Airport at Borjhar to meet Virat but the security stopped him. So he then decided to try his luck in the team hotel and succeeded.
While talking to News18, Rai described the series of events that led to his interaction with Virat Kohli. He talked about how he luckily got a vacant room and found his idol in the breakfast area. He tried calling Kohli and soon the Royal Challengers Bangalore star responded.
Rai said, “I think I was fortunate to get a vacant room. In the morning I could see him in the breakfast bay. I called him many times but the security was a hindrance here too. I did not want to give away this last chance and I told the hotel people that I was hungry and not keeping well. They allowed me to move into the breakfast area. Food was my least interest, I called Kohli many times here too. At one point he noticed me and asked me to meet him outside the breakfast area.”
Rohit Rai then talked about how he gifted the 34-year-old a framed collage of an Instagram Fan Page he created. The young fan said, “I presented a framed collage of the Fan Page on Instagram that I created in his name and have one lakh followers. He said he cannot carry it back and autographed it for me to keep as a sweet souvenir of this meeting. We clicked a selfie.”