‘Trying to trim that down to six was very challenging’ – KKR CEO Venky Mysore explains retention strategy

A lot of commotion surrounded the Kolkata Knight Riders’ potential retentions prior to the Indian Premier League’s 2025 mega-auction. A few speculations prior to the IPL deadline day said that Andre Russell would probably leave the team after ten years, but the all-rounder was ultimately signed for INR 10 crore. But captain Shreyas Iyer had to be let go after multiple discussions.

Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, and Sunil Narine signed the paperwork for INR 12 crore each, while Rinku Singh was KKR’s first choice retainer for INR 13 crore. For INR 4 crore, uncapped players Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh were signed. According to KKR CEO Venky Mysore, who was describing the rationale behind the retentions, the team would have preferred to keep 10 or 11 players because it was difficult to reduce to six.

In addition, he described the bond the team has with each of the players that have been kept, especially Russell and Narine, who have been with the team for more than ten years respectively.

It was rather difficult to reduce that to six individuals because it’s about the people you’ve had a relationship with and who have performed admirably for KKR. The obvious choices would have been perhaps ten or eleven players. Mysore stated, “Andre has been with us for ten years, while Sunil has been with us for twelve,” during an interview on KKR’s YouTube page.

Rinku and Varun have both been with KKR for a considerable amount of time, starting in 2018, while Varun has been around since 2019.

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Harshit has been a member of the team for three years, but Ramandeep joined last year and had a significant impact. Thus, it seems like a nice match to me,” he continued.

Check out what Venky Mysore had to say regarding KKR retentions 

With 51 crore, KKR’s fund was left for the IPL mega auction.

Notably, the auction will cost the Kolkata Knight Riders INR 51 crore. Shreyas, Nitish Rana, Mitchell Starc, and Phil Salt are among the important players they let go of from the previous campaign, and they hope to reclaim some of them through the auction.