Venky Mysore, the CEO of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), backed the hefty investment in Mitchell Starc, stating that every team had its own unique approach to utilizing the total budget of Rs 100 crore at the IPL 2024 Auction.
During the IPL 2024 auction at the Coco-Cola Arena in Dubai, there was fierce competition between the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Gujarat Titans (GT), resulting in Starc being acquired for a record-breaking INR 24.75 crore by Mysore’s franchise.
Mumbai Indians (MI) and Delhi Capitals (DC) initiated the bidding, but they couldn't match the escalating offers due to purse restraints. However, KKR and GT continued to raise the stakes until the IPL 2022 champions withdrew at Rs 24.50 crore, and Kolkata eventually acquired Starc’s services for the ground-breaking price on Tuesday (December 19).
Venky Mysore told media in Dubai: “Well, you know, I think my take on this is if you sort of look at it from the set of lenses of a price you pay for a player. And now it seems like wow, 24.75. I was telling someone that the salary cap of a team when IPL started in 2008 was 20 crores, the entire salary cap.”
He further noted, “So, things have changed, right? But, you know, I think our view is, when the auction is over, all the 10 teams are going to walk out of the auction having spent 100 crores and each team decides to slice it differently.”
Mysore signed off by saying, “So, what you've paid to somebody up down what not is matter of perspective. Ultimately, we're all spending the same amount of money.”
KKR Full Squad for IPL 2024:
Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Shreyas Iyer (c), Jason Roy, Sunil Narine, Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Andre Russell, Venkatesh Iyer, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy, KS Bharat, Chetan Sakariya, Mitchell Starc, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Ramandeep Singh, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Gus Atkinson, Sakib Hussain.
