Delhi: Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) made a big bid to buy their star all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer on the first day of the IPL 2025 mega auction. In the auction held in Jeddah, KKR spent Rs 23.25 crore to get Venkatesh back in their team.

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Venkatesh Iyer was part of the winning team KKR of IPL 2024. There was tough bidding between KKR and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) regarding him. Ultimately, KKR won and included Venkatesh in their team.

Venkatesh Iyer had given ultimatum to the team

KKR CEO Venky Mysore revealed that Venkatesh Iyer had given an ultimatum to the team before the auction. Mysore said, “Venkatesh had clearly said that if KKR did not take him back into the team, he would be very sad. “We didn’t want to make him sad and we are also happy that he is back in our team.”

This time, KKR had retained Rinku Singh, Varun Chakraborty, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh before the auction. Apart from Venkatesh, KKR included Vaibhav Arora, Anrich Norkhia, Quinton de Kock, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Mayank Markande in their team on the first day of the auction. They bought Quinton de Kock for Rs 3.60 crore and Anrich Norkhia for Rs 6.50 crore. Mysore said, “We wanted to retain our core team. We retained six players and brought back 2-3 old players. This will maintain the balance of the team.”