The IPL 2024 mini-auction is scheduled for December 19 with all the franchises weighing up at their squads, with regards to release and retain which players.
The player retention deadline is November 26 and Kolkata Knight Riders have some work to do.
KKR finished seventh on the points table last season, with just 6 wins from their 14 matches. Good news this time around is the return of skipper Shreyas Iyer with Gautam Gambhir being named as a mentor for the 17th edition of the Indian Premier League.
The likes of Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Venkatesh Iyer, Shardul Thakur and Varun Chakravarthy will surely be the core of the team and be retained. The two keepers Rahmanullah Gurbaz and N. Jagadeesan may also be kept along with last season’s newfound youngsters.
Having said that, it is possibly time for the old guard to move on with the West Indian duo of Andre Russell and Sunil Narine ending their ordeal of diminishing returns year on year. The pair have been synonymous with the Knight Riders brand across the globe now but the franchise think-tank must look beyond the big names.
There have been several rumours regarding which players the 10 franchises will release. Rumours were rife that Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will release their iconic all- rounder Andre Russell ahead of the auction.
But now, reportedly, it looks like the two-time IPL champions will keep hold of Russell after all, and will release three-star pacers.
According to a report by Cricbuzz, Kolkata Knight Riders are set to release Shardul Thakur ahead of the IPL 2023 4 auction. Shardul was traded in from Delhi Capitals before the IPL 2023 auction at a price of Rs 10 crore. He played 11 games and took just 7 wickets. With the bat too he scored just 168 runs