Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore doesn’t regret not retaining Shubman Gill

Shubman Gill has taken his Indian Premier League career to the next level with Gujarat Titans and even won the IPL with them in the inaugural season. However, Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore doesn’t regret not retaining him.

Kolkata Knight Riders are clear that they ‘do not regret’ losing any players who may be doing extremely well and bringing laurels to other IPL sides, said KKR CEO Venky Mysore on Sunday. He even mentioned that all the decision that are taking regarding the retaining of players are based on ‘available information.’

Shubman Gill had been with KKR ever since he burst on to the scene during the U19 World Cup and had been an integral part of the franchise since 2018. However, he never quite managed to register an IPL breakthrough with the franchise despite playing the IPL 2021 final with them.

As a result, the two-time IPL winners decided against retaining him ahead of the IPL 2022 mega auction and he ended up at Gujarat Titans. Gill took his IPL career to the next level with the debutant franchise and even helped them win the inaugural trophy in their debut season.

He has carried on with the same mentality and temperament and has even broken into India’s limited overs national side.

“There is actually happiness when we see some of the players we have developed go to other franchises and do well — Shubman Gill is an example,” Mysore told reporters on the sidelines of Knight Golf event here.

With 483 runs in IPL 2022, Gill was one of the top run-scorers last season. He has also begun the IPL 2023 season in excellent form and has already registered 333 runs from eight innings (41.62 average), that has put him behind Faf Du Plessis in the leading run scorers’ list.

It isn’t just Gill though. Former KKR players Kuldeep Yadav (Delhi Capitals), Piyush Chawla (Mumbai Indians), and Ajinkya Rahane (Chennai Super Kings) all look transformed playing for their new franchises and have done immensely well.

Rahane, who got limited opportunities at KKR last season, has been a transformed player under the talismanic MS Dhoni and made a Team India comeback in Tests after 15 months.

“It’s always difficult to lose such players and when they do such well. Yesterday also I was telling Gill (49) that I was enjoying your batting but I was hoping that you would not take the game away from us. score some runs, but let us… (win),” Mysore added.

Gill scored 49 runs at the Eden Gardens as GT went on to beat KKR by seven wickets to take their place at the top of the leaderboards.

Blaming it on the IPL rules, Mysore said: “The limitation as you know, the rules the IPL and BCCI make. In 2022 auction, we were allowed to keep only four players. There’s always a debate. There is always eight or nine whom we would like to keep, you had to select four out of those.”

“It’s tough but that’s the system though. It happens to every team. (KKR captain) Shreyas (Iyer) was with Delhi and he’s with us, so on and forth… I can give any number of example.”

“It’s never a regret, and the decisions were made based on the set of information that was available at that point. We believe those were the right decisions we made, but it’s always tough to lose some players.”

KKR had retained Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer and Sunil Narine ahead of IPL 2022.

“Iyer, Varun took us to the final in 2021. Russell arguably the best T20 allrounder, Narine I don’t have to say much about him. Those decisions were difficult and in the process you just let some players go.

“Rahul Tripathi (8.5 crores to Sunrisers Hyderabad), Lockie Ferguson (Rs 10 crores GT), Prasidh Krishna (Rs 10 crore to Rajasthan Royals) you can name several of them who went for big money at auction.

“So when you see those type of numbers you feel happy for them. It’s always a little backhanded compliment to our ability to bring those type of players and grow them in our setup,” Mysore said.

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