Defending Indian Premier League (IPL) champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have retained six players ahead of the retention deadline.

Faced with a problem of abundance, having to cut and select from a championship-winning team, KKR let go quite a few big names.

Among them was dynamic all-round batsman Venkatesh Iyer, who played an integral role in helping KKR win the title last season.

Following the retention announcement, Iyer broke his silence. While he feels that KKR’s retention was extremely holistic and they touched almost all the bases, at the same time he was also emotional about not being retained by the franchise.

Speaking to Revsportz, Venkatesh said: “KKR has had very good retention. I think they have easily covered 14-16 overs and with the bat they have almost covered five positions. So they had great retention but I would have loved to be on that list. KKR has given me a breakthrough and I have given everything for KKR and beyond cricket, there is something called excitement.”

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KKR has used all its holding points

KKR decided to exhaust their six holding points and will now participate in the IPL 2025 auction with 0 Right to Match (RTM) cards in their kit.

The Shahrukh Khan co-owned franchise decided to stick with sensational talent Rinku Singh as its top retainer with INR 13 crore, followed by the Caribbean duo of Andre Russell and Sunil Narine with INR 12 crore each along with the spin maestro Varun Chakravarthy for the same price. .

They also retained two uncapped players for INR 4 crore – Ramandeep Singh and Harshit Rana.

KKR will now enter the IPL 2025 auction with a purse value of Rs 51 crore out of the total Rs 120 crore, having spent Rs 69 crore on its retentions.

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