Mitchell Starc became the highest-priced player in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL) last year when KKR bought him for a whopping 24.75 crores. But come IPL 2025 Retention Day, Kolkata Knight Riders released their ace pacer. And with just a week remaining for the IPL 2025 Mega Auction, KKR will be eyeing to re-buy the speedster.
The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) went on to retain 6 players, but Mitchell Starc didn’t find his place in the list. The Kolkata outfits retained just 2 overseas players including both the Caribbean giants, Sunil Narine and Andre Russell. While fans hoped to see Starc on the list, they were surely disappointed to see the World Cup winner missing out.
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From KKR’s perspective, it makes all the sense of not retaining Starc. The defending champions have retained their core setup of players and will aim to rebuy their previous players from the IPL 2025 Mega Auction. As for Starc, KKR who has no RTMs remaining, can rebuy the player, this time obviously at a much reduced price.
Mitchell Starc Stats in IPL 2024
| Year | Mat | Balls | Runs | WKTS | BBM | Ave | Econ | SR | 4W | 5W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 14 | 251 | 444 | 17 | 4/33 | 26.12 | 10.61 | 14.76 | 1 | 0 |
Mitchell Starc scalped 17 wickets from 14 games last season, which is decent given his standards but simply not enough given his exorbitant price. This time however in the auction, Starc won’t be going under the hammer for such a huge amount. This means KKR can try to get their player back at a much-reduced amount.
With no Shreyas Iyer in the team, KKR now needs leaders in the squad. And Mitchell Starc is a perfect player for the role. Not only will he be spearheading the pace attack, the other youngsters in the team like Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh can learn loads from the Aussie superstar.
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