After several days of speculation and confusion, all the IPL franchises have finalized the names that they are retaining i.e. those who were part of the champion team in the 2024 season and will be seen playing for the team in the 2025 season as well. Thanks to the purchase in the auction, more such players can join the team. Of these, especially for KKR, note that their retained list includes Sunil Narine (12 crore), Rinku Singh (13 crore), Varun Chakraborty (12 crore), Harshit Rana (4 crore), Russell (12 crore) and Ramandeep. Singh's name (4 crores) is there but the name of captain Shreyas Iyer, who took the team to the title, is missing.

It is a very strange situation that a team does not retain its captain. Although Shreyas is not the first and only one in this list and the name of Rishabh Pant is missing from Delhi's list and KL Rahul's name is also missing from Lucknow's list, but Shreyas is different from them because he is the captain who has won the last IPL title.

When these names came out, Pant and Rahul knew the reason for not retaining their franchise because it was in the news for many days but there was a mystery in the case of Shreyas. That is why the first news was that KKR did not retain its champion captain. Shreyas himself did not end the speculations about the reason for this happening and did not explain why he was going back to the auction pool, but team CEO Venky Mysore clearly explained what happened. They say that when the management made the list for retention as per their choice, Shreyas was the number 1 pick in it. The reason for this was that the team saw Shreyas as the captain from the beginning and built the team around him. He was bought especially for this in the 2022 auction. He was injured in the 2023 season but the team had made it clear that he was the captain and as soon as he came back in 2024, he got the captaincy back.

This time things did not work out in the end. In fact, retaining any player is not just the wish of the franchise, it requires the consent of the player. Therefore, both of them pay attention not only to the money of the offer but also to many other issues and then the matter is resolved. Regarding Shreyas, he says that the contract fee offer for retainer could not be agreed upon. In this way it became clear that Shreyas did not like the offer and he felt that he was worth more than this. Therefore Shreyas decided to try his hand in the auction.

Can Shreyas still be seen playing for KKR in the 2025 season? This can happen and KKR can bid for him in the auction. Then it is very difficult to predict how far the offer will go because there will be more franchises in the market. However, by retaining Andre Russell, the franchise will not have the RTM option in the auction and they will have to bid if they want Shreyas again. In the 2024 season, Shreyas scored 352 runs and won the title, which was his first title after 2012 and 2014.

If we look at the record of Shreyas' auction and IPL contract fee, there is a continuous increase in it and that is why he felt that it would be better for him to go to the auction:
2015 to 2017 : Delhi Daredevils took the contract worth Rs 2.60 crore in the bid.
2018 to 2021: Delhi Daredevils retained contract worth Rs 7 crore
2022 to 2024 : Kolkata Knight Riders took the contract worth Rs 12.25 crore in the bid.