The three-time IPL champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will play the IPL 2025 as the defending champions. They have announced the retained played before the mega auction. 

Apart from winning the IPL 2024 after defeating SunRisers Hyderabad in the final, KKR won their first two IPL trophies in 2012 and 2014. 

Before winning the IPL 2024 trophy, KKR finished the league stage as the points table leader. 

Shreyas Iyer has been leading the KKR since the 2022 edition and he led the team to win the trophy in the last season. However, due to his unavailability for the 2023 season due to an injury, Nitish Rana led the team in the 2023 season. 

Talking about KKR’s success, we should also talk about their runners-up finishing at the Champions League T20 2014, which is now defunct. 

Kolkata Knight Riders player retention

KKR retained six players for INR 57 crore. The defending champions have retained four capped and two uncapped players. Due to using four capped (18 cr+14 cr+11cr+18cr) and two uncapped players (4 cr+4 cr), KKR will lose INR 69 crore. So, they will start the mega auction with a purse value of INR 51 crore.  

(Capped)

Rinku Singh (Indian): INR 13 Crore

Varun Chakravarthy (Indian): INR 12 Crore

Sunil Narine (Trinidadian): INR 12 Crore

Andre Russell (Jamaican): INR 12 Crore

(Uncapped) 

Harshit Rana (Indian): INR 4 Crore

Ramandeep Singh (Indian): INR 4 Crore

Right-to-Match (RTM) card availability for the mega auction

None