KKR IPL 2025 retained and released players: After some speculation to the contrary, the defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders retained Andre Russell as the star allrounder continues his long-time relationship with the franchise. But as expected, KKR have released their captain Shreyas Iyer into the auction pool. Rinku Singh, interestingly, was the franchise’s most expensive retention at Rs 13 cr. Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy, Ramandeep Singh and Harshit Rana complete the set as KKR retain their full quota of four retentions. They will not have any Right-To-Match options in the mega auction pool. How IPL retention works Teams are allowed to retain a maximum of six players and have an overall allotted budget of Rs 120 crore for the retention as well as mega auction. If a franchise opts to retain six players, they can retain a maximum of five capped and two uncapped players in either the 5+1 or 4+2 combination. While the capped players are segregated into three brackets ranging from Rs 18 crore to Rs 11 crore, an uncapped player can be …