KKR bought Mitchell Starc for Rs 24.75 crore in the IPL 2024 auction, becoming the most expensive player in IPL history.
Before the IPL 2025 mega auction, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) has released the list of retention and release players. The franchise has retained Rinku Singh, Sunil Narayan, Varun Chakraborty, Andre Russell, Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh. Players like captain Shreyas Iyer, Venkatesh Iyer, Mitchell Starc and Nitish Rana have been released.
KKR will enter the upcoming mega auction with a purse of Rs 51 crore, they do not even have any RTM card. Meanwhile, Australian player Mitchell Starc recently revealed that the fast bowler is quite disappointed as the franchise did not inform him about his release.
Mitchell Starc gave a big statement
Mitchell Starc told the Daily Telegraph,
I still haven’t received any reply from them. It is just like that, it is franchise cricket, so everyone except the Hyderabad boys (Pat Cummins and Travis Head) will be in the auction.
KKR bought Mitchell Starc for Rs 24.75 crore in the IPL 2024 auction, becoming the most expensive player in IPL history. Starc took 17 wickets for Kolkata Knight Riders last season. He gave match-winning performances against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Qualifier-1 and the final match and played a big role in the team winning the third title.
Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore had earlier said while talking about the team’s retention decisions,
Obviously the retention numbers seem low, as we build a team first and try to put all the pieces in place to compete. And when you compete, and especially in our case, we won our third title, and after that, it becomes even more difficult, because you really want to maintain the team that you’ve carefully built. , who are also the defending champions.