Shubman Gill, Kuldeep Yadav, Ajinkya Rahane and Piyush Chawla are some of the former Kolkata Knight Riders players who have been doing exceptionally well for their new franchises in the ongoing season of Indian Premier League.
Just like the other teams, the 2022 auction forced KKR to release many players as franchises were allowed to retain only 4 players.
But KKR CEO Venky Mysore on Saturday said that he has no regrets on losing quality players and said that the retention decisions were based on available information at that time.
Gill’s loss has been Gujarat Titans’ gain as the India opener played a key role in winning the title in their maiden appearance last season.
“There is actually happiness when we see some of the players we have developed go to other franchises and do well — Shubman gill is an example,” Mysore told reporters on the sidelines of Knight Golf event here.
With 483 runs, Gill was among the top-five rungetter last season. This time too, the youngster has been in fine form with 333 runs from eight innings (41.62 average), that has put him behind Faf Du Plessis in the leading run scorers’ list.
It’s not just Gill, Kuldeep (Delhi Capitals), Chawla (Mumbai Indians) and Rahane (Chennai Super Kings) have been in fine form for their respective franchises.
Rahane, who got limited opportunities at KKR last season, has been a transformed player under the talismanic MS Dhoni and made a Team India comeback in Tests after 15 months.
“It’s always difficult to lose such players and when they do such well. Yesterday also I was telling Gill (49) that I was enjoying your batting but I was hoping that you would not take the game away from us. score some runs, but let us… (win),” Mysore added.
Gill scored a 49 in GT’s seven-wicket win here on Saturday that also took the defending champions to the top of the standings.
Blaming it on the IPL rules, Mysore said: “The limitation as you know, the rules the IPL and BCCI make. In 2022 auction, we were allowed to keep only four players. There’s always a debate. There is always eight or nine whom we would like to keep, you had to select four out of those.”
“It’s tough but that’s the system though. It happens to every team. (KKR captain) Shreyas (Iyer) was with Delhi and he’s with us, so on and forth… I can give any number of example.”
“It’s never a regret, and the decisions were made based on the set of information that was available at that point. We believe those were the right decisions we made, but it’s always tough to lose some players.”
