Venky Mysore, the CEO of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), admitted that it was a very challenging task for them to trim the retentions down to six ahead of IPL 2025 mega auction after winning the previous season.

KKR have made their top retention pick in middle-order batter Rinku Singh (INR 13 crore) followed by Andre Russell (INR 12 crore), Sunil Narine (INR 12 crore), Varun Chakaravarthy (INR 12 crore), and uncapped duo of Harshit Rana (INR 4 crore), and Ramandeep Singh (INR 4 crore).

It meant KKR had to let go of their title-winning skipper Shreyas Iyer, Mitchell Starc, Phil Salt, Venkatesh Iyer and Nitish Rana. “The no brainers would have been maybe 10 or 11 players, but trying to trim that down to six was very challenging, because it’s about the players that you have built an equation with and who have done fantastic for KKR.

“Sunil has been with us for 12 years while Andre has been with us for 10 years. Varun has been associated with KKR for a long time, since 2019 and Rinku as well has been with for a significant amount of time, since 2018. Harshit has been with the team for three years while Ramandeep came in last year and really made a big impact.”

“So I think it’s a good combination. And at the same time, some of the thinking around how you want to handle the auction also came into play, but we thought that this was a really good combination for us. And, obviously leaving out some of the players is never easy,” said Mysore in a statement issued by the franchise.

He also talked about the process of conversations they had with the players before finalising their retention picks. “First and foremost, I think our approach has always been to maintain transparency and have proper conversations with everyone. I’ve not really had conversations with the six we have retained, but I have engaged in conversations with the ones we couldn’t retain.”

“But obviously I am aware of some of the narratives that have been going around. It’s sufficient to say that, we always engage in talks with everyone and most people understand our position. In almost all cases, everyone asks if there is a way we can retain them, but they also understand why we can’t, and hopefully, somewhere our paths will cross again.”

“But also, something to be kept in mind is that retention is not a one way street. It is always something that has to be mutually agreed upon. So, sometimes mutual agreements happen but we also have to be respectful of the fact that a player may choose to go the other way, And, it’s a little tough when that situation happens, but that happens.”

With KKR having a purse of INR 51 crore, Mysore also talked how the mega auction would be a different scenario for them. “The nature of the rules this year is that it will be challenging for everyone in different ways. In our case, after retaining 6 players we go into the auction with 51 crores and no RTMs (Right-To-Match Card).”

“But then there may be some other team who retains none or very few, and they come in with more money. But their challenge is to build a squad, a full squad. Our challenge will be to complete our squad, so each one will come with their own strategies, and everyone is very experienced. I’ve been part of 14 auctions with this being the 15th one, but it never ceases to surprise me.”

“So all we can do is say that this is what we have decided, this is the money that we are going in with and this is the kind of squad that we want to build and work very hard to prepare. I know that with the think tank and the support from the owners we will come up with a good plan, and we’ll work through it.”

He signed off by throwing light on the involvement of support staff, especially after Gautam Gambhir, Abhishek Nayar and Ryan ten Doeschate left to join the Indian team. “They have been involved significantly as this is a collective thought process and collective decisions. I think DJ has been terrific, very engaged, as has Chandu (Chandrakant Pandit), along with Bharathi Arun, Carl Crowe and our analyst Nathan Leamon.”

“The think tank has been very engaged and very strong in the discussions. I’ve been very fortunate that there’s a group there that knows exactly what they’re doing, lots of experience there and looking back at what has worked for us and how we continue to maintain that continuity, there will be change, but there’s also continuity. So, let’s hope that we can, we can do a good job with the auction as well.