Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) Venky Mysore said that the franchise has ‘no regrets’ on decisions of not retaining players like Shubman Gill, who have gone on to do well for other franchises in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Shubman Gill was picked by KKR in the IPL 2018 auction after his heroics for the India U19 team in the youth World Cup that year. He remained with the franchise till IPL 2021 and played 58 games for them and made 1417 runs for them with 10 half-centuries.
He played as a finisher in the beginning before going on to opening the innings for them. He was let go by the KKR franchise ahead of the mega auction in IPL 2022 and was picked by Gujarat Titans outside the auction.
Gill then scored 483 runs in GT’s IPL 2022 title-winning run including the highest score of 96 and even in the ongoing IPL 2023, he has made 333 runs in 8 matches thus far with 3 half-centuries.
“There is actually happiness when we see some of the players we have developed go to other franchises and do well — Shubman Gill is an example,” Mysore told reporters on the sidelines of the Knight Golf event.
It’s not just Gill, former KKR players Kuldeep Yadav (Delhi Capitals), Piyush Chawla (Mumbai Indians) and Ajinkya Rahane (Chennai Super Kings) have been in fine form for their respective franchises.
“It’s always difficult to lose such players and when they do such well. Yesterday also I was telling Gill (49) that I was enjoying your batting but I was hoping that you would not take the game away from us. score some runs, but let us… (win),” Mysore added.
Blaming it on the IPL rules, Mysore said: “The limitation as you know, is the rules the IPL and BCCI make. In the 2022 auction, we were allowed to keep only four players. There’s always a debate. There are always eight or nine whom we would like to keep, you had to select four out of those.” “It’s tough but that’s the system though. It happens to every team. (KKR captain) Shreyas (Iyer) was with Delhi and he’s with us, so on and forth… I can give any number of examples.”
“It’s never a regret, and the decisions were made based on the set of information that was available at that point. We believe those were the right decisions we made, but it’s always tough to lose some players.”
KKR had retained Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer, and Sunil Narine ahead of IPL 2022.
“Iyer, Varun took us to the final in 2021. Russell is arguably the best T20 all-rounder, Narine I don’t have to say much about him. Those decisions were difficult and in the process you just let some players go. Rahul Tripathi (8.5 crores to Sunrisers Hyderabad), Lockie Ferguson (Rs 10 crores GT), Prasidh Krishna (Rs 10 crore to Rajasthan Royals) you can name several of them who went for big money at auction.
So when you see those types of numbers you feel happy for them. It’s always a little backhanded compliment to our ability to bring those types of players and grow them in our setup,” Mysore said.
Having lost 6 matches from 9 games thus far, KKR must now win all their remaining five matches to keep their playoff hopes alive.
(PTI inputs)
