IPL 2025: 'Retention is not a one-way street' - Has KKR's Venky Mysore hinted the reason behind Shreyas Iyer departure?

Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore has opened up on KKR's retention policy as the franchise announced their retained players' list on Thursday (October 31).

KKR have retained six players ahead of the IPL mega auction, slated to take place in November. Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy and Rinku Singh are their capped retentions, while Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh have also been kept as uncapped players.

But the Knight Riders had to leave out their captain Shreyas Iyer, who led them to the IPL 2024 victory, a trophy drought which ended after a decade-long wait. KKR CEO Venky Mysore, who has been closely attached to the Knight Riders, opened up his thoughts on the released players.

"Leaving out some of the players is never easy. There have been obviously last few weeks or months, there have been lots of conversations with a lot of players. So in fact, you know, I've not really had conversations with the six we retained, but the ones we couldn't retain. Obviously, I am aware of some of the narratives that's going around there," Mysore said in a video released by the Knight Riders.

But after that, Mysore said about retention's mutual will from both the player's and franchise's behalf. There have been reports that Shreyas Iyer's exorbitant salary demands led to his departure from the franchise, and despite not naming anyone, Mysore spoke about the willingness of a player to be retained as well.

"But also, something to be kept in mind is that retention is not a one-way street. It is always something that has to be mutually agreed upon. Sometimes it happens that that mutual agreement, whether it happens or not, we may want, but we have to be respectful of the fact that a player may choose that it might be better going the other way. So we're respectful of that. It's a little tough when that situation happens, but that's okay. I think we'll leave it at that," Mysore added.

The IPL 2024 champions will be heading into the IPL 2025 auction with a decent purse of Rs 51 crore. They have retained their core ahead of the auction, which can be a massive boost for them in the upcoming cycle.