Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) kept everyone on their toes about who they would be retaining and releasing from the IPL 2024 winning squad on the Retention Deadline Day before the IPL 2025 mega auction. While six major players were retained, many were left surprised by KKR's title-winning captain Shreyas Iyer's exclusion from the retentions. Now, KKR's CEO Venky Mysore has opened up about why Shreyas Iyer was released from the team ahead of the mega auction.
In an interview with RevSportz, KKR CEO Venky Mysore hinted that the team's management and Shreyas Iyer were in disagreement on the monetary aspect despite the winning captain being number 1 on the list of players that KKR wanted to retain.
Venky Mysore was quoted as saying, "The interesting thing about retention is that there are so many aspects to it and forces as play. But what is fundamental to a retention that most people sometimes don’t understand that it’s a matter of mutually agreeing. It’s not a one-sided right that a franchise has. The player also has to consider various factors and agree. Sometimes along the line that agreement doesn’t happen because of various factors; money or somebody wants to test their value or whatever it is. That influences a decision as well, eventually, but he was No.1 on our list."
For the unversed, Kolkata Knight Riders' most expensive retention was Rinku Singh with Rs 13 crore, followed by Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, and Varun Chakravarthy, with Rs 12 crore each.
KKR also made two uncapped retentions in the form of Ramandeep Singh and Harshit Rana. KKR is now one of the two teams going into the mega auction with no RTM cards.
