Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) entered IPL 2025 as the defending champions but bowed out of the season in eighth place with only five wins. They had hopes from a lot of their players, including the one who was bought for a humongous amount of Rs 23.75 crore.
Kolkata Knight Riders won the 2024 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) under Shreyas Iyer’s captaincy. But they ended up splurging a massive amount of Rs 23.75 crore on the wrong Iyer at the mega auction. Yes, Venkatesh Iyer got a huge amount of money from the three-time champions and, for no fault of his, has been scrutinised a lot. Unfortunately for Iyer, the price tag got to him and the season turned out to be extremely poor for him.
Interestingly, Lucknow Super Giants and Royal Challengers Bengaluru had also bid aggressively for Iyer, and in the end, KKR secured him for a big price. The two teams would be thanking their stars now as the pick would’ve seriously affected their team building for the rest of the auction. The same happened with KKR, and they had to make Ajinkya Rahane the captain, the player whom they picked only in the accelerated auction at his base price.
Venkatesh Iyer’s performance in IPL 2025
| Matches Played | Innings | Runs scored | Average | Strike Rate | 50s/100s | Fours/Sixes | Money Earned per run |
| 11 | 7 | 142 | 20.28 | 139.21 | 1/0 | 15/4 | Rs 16.73 lakh |
Venkatesh ended IPL 2025 with only 142 runs in seven innings (11 matches) at an average of 20.28 and a strike rate of 139.21. His every run in the season cost Rs 16.73 lakh to KKR, while for every match, the cricketer earned around a whopping Rs 2.16 crore.
Such was his form that the KKR management eventually dropped the cricketer from Madhya Pradesh for the last few matches of the season. Manish Pandey replaced him in the line-up, but that didn’t change their fortunes either. Eventually, they ended their season with their worst defeat, by 110 runs, in IPL history against the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH).
As for Iyer, given the fact that he was dropped at the fag end, it remains to be seen if the franchise ends up releasing him ahead of the auction and buy him back again for a lesser price.