Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra added that the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) first retention before the IPL 2025 auction should be Shreyas Iyer as well. He said that the franchise co-owner Shahrukh Khan won’t allow their captain to leave for
emotional reasons. Notably, Shreyas led KKR to the IPL 2024 title as well by defeating the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) by eight wickets in the final in Chennai in May this year as well.
In a video shared on his YouTube channel, Chopra said, “You want to firstly retain the captain, who is Shreyas Iyer. If 18 crores go, let them go because you won’t get a captain. He is your winning captain. If Gautam (Gambhir) isn’t there, retain your captain to maintain some continuity. There is no doubt that you should retain Shreyas Iyer. You might get Shreyas Iyer for 18 crores using the RTM but never do that with the captain because eventually this game is played by humans, and humans have hearts, and thereby emotions. Who will understand emotions better than Khan sahab (Shahrukh Khan)? So I feel he won’t allow Shreyas Iyer to go.”
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However, Shreyas Iyer was KKR’s fourth-highest run-getter in IPL 2024. He scored 351 runs at an average of 39.00 and a strike rate of 146.86 in 14 innings as well. In the same video, Aakash Chopra explained that Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, and Sunil Narine should be the their other
three capped retentions as well.
“Second – since I am looking from the Indian perspective, if Rinku Singh comes to the market, he will be sold for 14 crores. So retain Rinku Singh for sure. Retain both Andre Russell and Sunil Narine. The problem is that if you retain both, one will be for 11 crores but the fourth retention will be for 18 crores. I would say it is still worth it,” he said.
“That is where I will stop. Look to retain only four players. If Harshit Rana remains uncapped, I will try to retain him for four crores. Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy and Venkatesh Iyer are quality players but if all three of them go into the auction, none of them might go for 14 crores and probably not even for 11 crores,” Chopra concluded.
