IPL-winning skipper Shreyas Iyer's omission from Kolkata Knight Riders' (KKR) retention list came as a major surprise for the cricket fans and experts alike.
The defending champions announced Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh as their retentions on October 31.
“We had some difficult decisions to make because we had more players to retain than we were allowed. But I think we have come up with a good formula after working with the think tank and the owners and have tried to work this through. We have retained 4 Capped players and 2 Uncapped Players. Starting with our stalwarts Sunil Narine and Andre Russell along with Rinku Singh and Varun Chakaravarthy. The two uncapped players are Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh, who have done exceedingly well for us and are now representing India," the franchise managing director Venky Mysore told KKR.
“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 can’t, 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’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 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’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," he added.
Venky Mysore also hinted that Shreyas Iyer decided to part ways with KKR since mutual agreements couldn’t be reached.
“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," Venky explained.
KKR are one of only two teams to retain all six players and will have no RTMs to use at the mega auction later this month. They subtracted a total of INR 57 crore from their overall purse of INR 120 crore.
With 19 slots still to be filled, Venky Mysore admitted that it would be a challenge to build a squad.
“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," Venky said.
“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 remarked.
