‘He told us, “Pick me or else…”’: KKR opens up on Venkatesh Iyer’s Expensive Bid

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) made a massive bid of Rs 23.25 crore to buy their star all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer in the IPL 2025 mega auction. The auction took place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. KKR had already retained six players but did not have the option of right-to-match (RTM) cards. Due to this, they had to take big decisions to bring their main players back into the team.

During the auction, there was a tremendous bid between KKR and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for Venkatesh Iyer. Eventually, KKR went ahead in buying Iyer. Venkatesh Iyer played a crucial role in KKR's IPL win this year, and that was why the franchise did everything possible to bring him back.

KKR CEO Venky Mysore revealed that Iyer had told the franchise before the auction that he would be quite disappointed if KKR did not buy him. "We wanted to retain our core players. We retained six players and planned to bring back 2-3 players from last year. Venkatesh is extremely important to us, and we made sure he became part of our team. ”

"Venkatesh told us clearly that if you don't pick me, I will be very upset. We didn't want him to be sad, and we are also very happy. ”

In the first day's auction, three players received bids of more than Rs 20 crore. Rishabh Pant was bought by Lucknow Super Giants for Rs 27 crore, while Shreyas Iyer went to Punjab Kings for Rs 26.25 crore.

Apart from Venkatesh Iyer, KKR also added players like Quinton de Kock, Anrich Nortje, Vaibhav Arora, and Ramandeep Singh to their squad.