Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], November 1 : Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) CEO Venky Mysore said that the number of retentions do feel less and there were around 10-11 "no brainer" players that the team management had in mind while deciding on the final retention list.
KKR announced on Thursday that they have retained Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, and Varun Chakravarthy ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 mega auction.
In IPL 2024, KKR secured their third title under Shreyas Iyer's captaincy with an 8-wicket victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad. However, Iyer, who led the Knights in the 17th season, has not been retained. Several big stars including Shreyas Iyer, Mitchell Starc, Phil Salt, Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana have been released.
Speaking on the KKR's website, Mysore said, "Obviously the number of retentions do feel less, because we first build a squad and try to put all pieces in place in order to compete. And when you compete, and particularly in our case, thankfully, we won our third championship, and after that, it becomes even more difficult, because you really want to keep the squad that you have carefully built, who are also the defending champions. So in an ideal world, we would have wanted the whole team back. But the reality is that you cannot, and therefore making those decisions within the parameters provided makes it definitely challenging."
"The no brainers would have been maybe 10 or 11 players, but trying to trim that down to six was very challenging, because it is 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 us 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 is 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," he concluded.
In September, the Kolkata franchise appointed former West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo as their new mentor, succeeding Gautam Gambhir.
Bravo retired from international cricket in 2021 and ended his IPL playing career last year. Over the past year, he has transitioned into coaching, working with Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and the Afghanistan team.
His role with KKR marks his second coaching position in the IPL. Bravo joined CSK in 2011, retired as a player in 2022, and returned as their bowling coach in 2023.