Venkatesh Iyer is the fourth most-capped current KKR player after Andre Rusell, Sunil Narine and Varun Chakaravarthy.
Does buying someone for Rs 23.75 crore at the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 auction confirm that you’ll lead the franchise that bought? All the signs suggest. Only three players were bought for over Rs 20 crore: Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer, and Venkatesh Iyer.
The first two have ample experience leading IPL teams. Pant has led the Delhi Capitals from 2021 to 2024, while Shreyas has taken the Capitals to the final in 2020 and the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to the title just last year. The odd one out is Venkatesh, who doesn’t even lead his domestic side, Madhya Pradesh.
Venkatesh Iyer as KKR captain for IPL 2025?
But Mohammad Kaif, former assistant coach of the Delhi Capitals, feels Venkatesh should be KKR’s captain for the IPL 2025. His reasoning is simple. Chandrakant Pandit, the head coach of the franchise, works alongside Venkatesh at MP. Both have a great bond, and Pandit in the last two years has won two trophies (IPL and Ranji) with Venky.
Apart from Venkatesh, KKR doesn’t really have captaincy options. They could make one of Sunil Narine or Andre Russell their skipper, but generally overseas players aren’t really backed as leaders. In Russell’s case, one can’t even be sure about his fitness to name him skipper. Of course, if they wished to make either one their captain, why didn’t they do it back in 2023, when Shreyas Iyer was out due to injury? Instead, Nitish Rana led the side.
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Rinku Singh, the only other option
Rinku Singh remains the only other viable option. He was KKR’s top retention. But, although he’s become famous for his exploits in the IPL for Team India, one can’t say much about his captaincy skills. The thing that goes in Rinku’s favour is his superior domestic experience when compared with Venkatesh, but then again, why buy someone for Rs 23.75 crore if you don’t want to be your captain? KKR might as well have gone after someone like KL Rahul, who went for Rs 14 crore if they just needed a top-order batter.
Apart from these two, KKR really doesn’t have a captaincy option. Ajinkya Rahane, who once led the Rajasthan Royals, won’t probably even make the team, and that’s the end of the list. It’ll be fascinating to see if letting go of Shreyas Iyer was the right call in IPL 2025.
KKR squad for IPL 2025
Rinku Singh, Varun Chakaravarthy, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Harshit Rana, Ramandeep Singh, Venkatesh Iyer, Quinton de Kock (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Anrich Nortje, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Vaibhav Arora, Mayank Markande, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Spencer Johnson, Luvnith Sisodia, Ajinkya Rahane, Anukul Roy, Moeen Ali, Umran Malik
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