Kolkata Knight Riders entered the auction having retained four of their match-winners from last season: Venkatesh Iyer, Varun Chakravarthy, Andre Russell, and Sunil Narine. On the first day of the auction, they bought back Nitish Rana, Pat Cummins, and Shivam Mavi. In an attempt to retain some players, they might have overpaid for some of them.
Purse entered: INR 48 crore
Purse left: INR 0.45 crore
Biggest buys: Shreyas Iyer (INR 12.25 crore), Nitish Rana (INR 8 crore), Pat Cummins (INR 7.25 crore)
In addition, they might have bought a potential captain in the India batter Shreyas Iyer, who was the third-most-expensive buy of the auction. In the later part of the auctions, they picked Alex Hales, Sam Billings, Tim Southee, and Umesh Yadav to fill some holes in their squad.
Fitness-related issues to core players such as Narine, Andre Russell, and Chakravarthy. A good starting XI on paper but lack of able replacements and no death over specialist may have to rely on the spinning duo of Narine and Varun. Lack of a specialist wicket-keeper could force them to play an overseas wicketkeeper or rely on Sheldon Jackson.
Squad List:
Andre Russell (R), Venkatesh Iyer (R), Sunil Narine (R), Varun Chakravarthy (R), Pat Cummins, Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Shivam Mavi, Sheldon Jackson, Ajinkya Rahane, Rinku Singh, Anukul Roy, Rasikh Dar, Baba Indrajith, Chamika Karunaratne, Abhijeet Tomar, Pratham Singh, Ashok Sharma, Sam Billings, Alex Hales, Tim Southee, Ramesh Kumar, Mohammad Nabi, Umesh Yadav, Aman Khan