A very charming speaker, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan is known for his excellent communication skills but the same cannot be said for his Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Even days after the IPL franchises submitted their list of retained players to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Australia bowler Mitchell Starc is yet to hear from KKR.
“I still haven’t heard from them (KKR)…,” said Mitchell Starc to Australia’s The Daily Telegraph.
Picked up at the mini-auction for Rs 24.75 crore in December 2023, the speedster was Player of the Match in the IPL 2024 final for his spell of 2/14 versus Sunrisers Hyderabad but surprisingly hasn’t had any dialogue with the defending champions.
#IPL Retentions: Why No Shreyas Iyer in KKR Doesn’t Come As a Surprise
TimesofIndia.com reached out to KKR CEO Venky Mysore for a comment but the top boss didn’t respond to a text message and chose to press the block button on Whatsapp. KKR’s silence towards Starc shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the franchise followed a similar approach with captain Shreyas Iyer too.
As we had reported last week, KKR had their first chat with Shreyas only three days before the IPL retentions deadline. Prior to the chat on October 27, no one at KKR had reached out to the player who led them to their third IPL title.
Word on the street was that Shreyas was looking at a high retainer fee but even for that to happen, the two parties had to engage in timely discussions but that wasn’t the case. KKR were always looking at the likes of Andre Russell (Rs 12 crore) and Sunil Narine (Rs 12 crore) as first choices and they got the second-best price tag. Rinku Singh was top retention at Rs 13 crore and uncapped players Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh were retained for Rs 4 crore each.
KKR CEO, in an interaction with the team’s official website, maintained they “engaged in conversations” but latest revelation by Starc and the Iyer episode suggest otherwise.
“First and foremost, I think our approach has always been to maintain transparency and have proper conversations with everyone. I’ve not only had conversations with the six we have retained, but I have also engaged in conversations with the ones we couldn’t retain. Obviously I am aware of some of the narratives that have been going around. It’s sufficient to say that, we always engage in talks with everyone and most people understand our position,” Mysore was quoted by KKR.in.
Shreyas will now enter the IPL mega auction and is already attracting a lot of interest from leading franchises for a leadership role.