Their championship-winning captain Shreyas Iyer’s retention status is currently uncertain.
With the IPL 2025 mega auction retention deadline coming on October 31, it’s the time where all ten teams will be firming up their retention plans. Kolkata Knight Riders, the IPL 2024 winners, are also in the process of finalising their retention list. However, sources told IANS that their title-winning captain Shreyas Iyer’s retention status is currently uncertain because other players, including middle-order batsman Rinku Singh, wrist-spinner Varun Chakaravarthy, and uncapped fast-bowling all-rounder Harshit Rana, who was recently called up for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series, are ahead of him in the race to be retained by the team.
While Narine and Russell were at their all-round best as the franchise’s stalwarts, Chakravarthy was a key figure in the spin-bowling department, picking up 21 wickets at an economy rate of 8.04. Due to those performances, he was able to return to the Indian team for this month’s Twenty20 Internationals match against Bangladesh and was chosen for the South Africa series the following month.
Rinku, despite making only 168 runs in 14 games this year, has been with the team since 2018 and has been credited as a find of the franchise ever since he found his groove as a finisher. Having joined the team in 2022, Rana had a breakthrough season in 2024, taking 19 wickets.
On the other hand, Shreyas scored 351 runs in 14 innings at a strike-rate of 146.86 while leading KKR to their third IPL title in May this year. Despite missing the 2023 season because of a lower-back injury, the right-handed Mumbai batter has been a member of the team since 2022.
Franchises looking for a captain will have an opportunity to sign Iyer and assign him to their teams if circumstances force him to enter the mega auction pool. Since their players are so good, it was inevitable that Kolkata would have a lot of retention issues.
In addition to the six players listed above, KKR also had the services of Phil Salt, Venkatesh Iyer, Mitchell Starc, and an uncapped all-rounder named Ramandeep Singh, who was recently called up to the Indian team for the T20Is against South Africa next month. Each team is allowed to keep a maximum of five players with caps and a maximum of two players without caps under the IPL retention regulations.