A twist in the tale! Shreyas Iyer, the man who got the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) their first IPL trophy in a decade, might choose to decline KKR’s retention offer. This comes after the franchise has already lost its mentor, Gautam Gambhir, and assistant coach, Abhishek Nayar.
No captaincy options at KKR
Shreyas has apparently received a hefty offer from one of these other nine franchises and is contemplating leaving KKR and heading for the IPL 2025 mega auction table. If that’s the case, KKR have a huge problem at hand. They’ll probably retain Andre Russell and Sunil Narine, but both aren’t considered captaincy options.
Other possible retentions might be Rinku Singh or Varun Chakravarty. But these two Indian stars haven’t displayed anything that screams leadership quality. Nitish Rana probably won’t be retained and therefore isn’t in the captaincy discussion either.
So, KKR have to get themselves a captain for IPL 2025 at the mega auction. Appointing a foreign player as your captain is something IPL teams shy away from, and KKR haven’t tried that since making Eoin Morgan their captain in IPL 2020-21. Assuming they’ll pick an Indian captain, they won’t have many options. In fact, they’ll be just three big main ones: Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul and Suryakumar Yadav.
Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma & KL Rahul—any one of them will do
Now, we are assuming it’s virtually impossible that the Mumbai Indians (MI) will retain both Rohit and Suryakumar. We’ve already heard SKY has received an offer from KKR, and he’s already been part of Kolkata from 2014 to 2017. You can’t forget that on top of being the world’s best T20 batter, Surya’s now the Indian captain as well. His stature has grown immensely, and teams would want him as their captain and go big for him at the IPL 2025 mega auction.
Since his removal as captain last year, we’ve heard that Rohit isn’t happy with MI. You have to take into account that Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, and Suryakumar all deserve Rs 18 crore, and if Rohit has to stay, he needs to be paid something similar. Can MI spend Rs 72 crore on four players? One can’t think about how they can. We haven’t even talked about Rohit Sharma’s credentials. You can’t forget he’s won 5 IPL titles as captain. Of course, just this year, he got India to the T20 World Cup 2024 title as well.
For Rahul, InsideSport can confirm that he and the Lucknow Super Giants have amicably decided they don’t work to be associated with IPL 2025. Some have already started speculating that KL Rahul will join the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, his old franchise, but we’ll have to see about that at the auction table. Rahul was also unhappy about not being allowed to play in the middle order last season, as he wanted to have a chance to make India’s squad for the T20 World Cup. If he comes in for Shreyas Iyer, he can take his spot at number four or five and can even revert to his old aggressive self.
Captaincy record comparison
| Captain | Matches | Won | Lost | Tied | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KL Rahul | 64 | 31 | 31 | 2 | 48.43 |
| Rohit Sharma | 158 | 87 | 67 | 4 | 55.06 |
| Suryakumar Yadav | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 100 |
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