Kolkata Knight Riders spent a humble sum of 7.55 crores rupees at the IPL Auction 2021. Kolkata’s last season was a disaster and fans expected KKR to make some crucial buys. The Kolkata team surprised everyone with extremely strategic team selections. Most departments of the game were covered as KKR have spinners, all-rounders and good batsmen. Surprisingly and unfortunately for Dinesh Karthik and company, KKR failed to win a lot of games.
This time, they were in with a plan in the Auction. They bought Shakib who can bat as wel as compliment Sunil Narine in the spin bowling department. Ben Cutting was also bought at 75 lakhs. It’s amusing how certain players go for such big amounts while some other deserving ones are left behind. Nonetheless, it was a great deal for KKR. Pawan Negi and Karun Nair were the two domestic players bought by KKR. Both of them can be reliable on occasions and to have them at 50 lakh each is an achievement.
In a surprise turn of events, Harbhajan Singh’s name was called up twice in the auction. The first time he went unsold, but on the second occasion KKR bought the spinner at his base price of 2 crore rupees.
At the auction table for KKR were Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla’s children. They became the point of attraction for the media.
Here is the full KKR squad for IPL 2021: Eoin Morgan, Dinesh Karthik, Nitish Rana, Shubman Gill, Rinku Singh, Rahul Tripathi, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Kuldeep Yadav, Lockie Ferguson, Pat Cummins, Prasidh Krishna, Sandeep Warrier, Shivam Mavi, Varun Chakravarthy, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Tim Seifert, Shakib Al Hasan (3.2 crores), Harbhajan Singh (2 crores), Ben Cutting (75 lakh), Karun Nair (50 lakh), Pawan Negi (50 lakh), Sheldon Jackson (20 lakh), Venkatesh Iyer (20 lakh), Vaibhav Arora (20 lakh)