Match card

Kolkata Knight Riders: 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.