Three Indian batsmen sold for high prices in IPL mega auction. Lucknow is buying Rishabh Pant for a record average of Rs 27 crore. Earlier, Punjab Kings bought Shreyas Iyer for Rs 26.75 crore. Kolkata was not far behind. They brought Venkatesh Iyer to the team for a huge amount. Spent 23 million 75 million rupees! Kolkata Knight Riders Chief Executive Venky Mysore later revealed why he was taken at such a high cost. Venkatesh gave a kind of ultimatum before the auction.
However, it should not be forgotten that Venkatesh's performance in Kolkata's title win last season and the 2021 final was influential. Exactly this idea worked in Calcutta camp. Venky Mysore said, 'But they have proved what they can do on the field. The year we won the championship and the year we went to the final in 2021, Venkatesh had a huge impact on the performance. He is also a great boy in the team. So he gave us an ultimatum, if he is not in the team, it will be very heartbreaking. We didn't want that. I am also very happy with that.'
Ultimatums were not the only thing in mind. Kolkata wanted to keep the main team that won the title last season. They have retained Rinku Singh, Varun Chakraborty, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh. Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Einrikh Norkia were again picked up from the auction. Managed to keep 9 out of 10 from last season's squad. That was the goal of Calcutta. Venky was saying, 'At the end of the day, can I take whomever I want? Of course, price matters. So it cannot but surprise many. And when the salary cap is 120 crore rupees. Then the price is bound to increase. But our aim was to keep the core group intact. We have retained 6 people for that purpose and managed to retake 2-3 people from last year's team. With Venkatesh, our thinking was that we don't want a situation where we don't have a chance to get him.'
