IPL 2025: Kolkata Knight Riders retained and released players list ahead of mega auction

With the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announcing the retained and released players list ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 mega auction, the defending champions, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) made some surprise yet shocking decisions as they opted to release their title winning skipper Shreyas Iyer. However, the decision to release Iyer came with the management denying massive pay rise for the Indian batter, they opted to retain the likes of Rinku Singh, Varun Chakar a varthy, Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh among the Indian lot.

Moreover, with Rinku Singh bagging INR 13 Crore, the highest from the lot, the franchise also retained the services of their core overseas options in Andre Russell and Sunil Narine, both earning INR 12 Crore each. With this, the IPL 2024 title winners became only the second to make all six retentions ahead of the mega auction, apart from Rajasthan Royals.

Below is the list of six players retained by Kolkata Knight Riders with their respective salaries.

List of players retained by Kolkata Knight Riders ahead of IPL 2025 mega auction:

With that, the Kolkata-based franchise has spent INR 57 Crore out of their INR 120 Crore purse for retaining six players ahead of the IPL 2025 season. It would mean that they will have INR 51 Crore to spend to get the best of the talent in the mega auction, to build their squad for the next year.

List of players released by Kolkata Knight Riders ahead of IPL 2025 mega auction:

Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Phil Salt, Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Venkatesh Iyer, Vaibhav Arora, KS Bharat, Chetan Sakariya, Mitchell Starc, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Allah Ghazanfar, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Jason Roy, Gus Atkinson, Mujeeb Ur Rahman