The Rs 23.75 crore they splashed on Venkatesh Iyer was the classic example. Having spent Rs 24.75 crore on Australian fast bowler Mitchell Starc last year, it didn’t come as a surprise that KKR chose to spend big again. But it did come as a surprise that they splurged nearly half of their purse on Venkatesh, who can float in the batting order and bowl military medium pace.

Strategy In Plenty 💬
Record-Breaking Bids ✅
Bidding Wars 🤜🤛

Day 1 of #TATAIPLAuction 2025 had it all 🤝#TATAIPL pic.twitter.com/CT82QGj36H

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) November 25, 2024

“The auctions are this way only. At the end of the day, it is about the player you want and the type of player you want. It (the prices) surprises you all the time,” KKR CEO Venky Mysore said after acquiring Venkatesh.

Though Venkatesh’s name was in the all-rounder’s list, the introduction of the Impact Player has changed the status of multi-skilled cricketers and diluted their value. Test-capped Shardul Thakur is a prime example. He went unsold and the likes of Washington Sundar (Rs 3.2 crore), Mitchell Marsh (Rs 3.4 crore), Shahbaz Ahmed (1.9 crore), Glenn Phillips (Rs 2 crore), Sam Curran (Rs 2.40 crore) and Glenn Maxwell (Rs 4.20 crore) took home a lower pay cheques. In the age of Impact Player, teams prefer specialists. And when the retention lists were out, it was hardly a surprise that KKR didn’t retain the all-rounder who had just bowled one over throughout the last edition.

At the auction, he was expected to be cheaper. It is the reason why despite retaining as many as six players, KKR chose to throw Venkatesh back into the auction pool. This is because the likes of Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Rinku Singh and Harshit Rana — players they retained — were definitely going to cost more. As Lucknow SuperGiants joined the initial bidding before Royal Challengers Bengaluru joined the race, KKR didn’t flinch, instead they kept raising the paddle to acquire him.

Mysore explained the rationale and it was more about retaining a ‘Knight’. “When you have salary caps that keep going up, the prices will expand. For us, it was about keeping our core. We kept six players and have brought 2-3 players back from last year. That was the thinking. We definitely didn’t want to find ourselves in a situation where we would not want him back. But on an overall basis, it all balances out.” he said.

It meant when KKR took the field in the next edition of the IPL, they would have 9 of the 11 players (the joint most for any team) who won them the title last season. Apart from these nine, they even tried to get back Phil Salt and Allah Ghazanfar who was part of their squad last year and Rahul Tripathi, associated with them earlier.

And this continuity factor is what made franchises to even recommend to the BCCI to explore the option of having mega auctions once in four-five years. During that meeting at the end of July, KKR were among the ones who wanted as many RTMs as possible alongside Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Sunrisers Hyderabad, Rajasthan Royals and Gujarat Titans.

𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗸! 🔥 🔥

Venkatesh Iyer will continue his Purple patch with #KKR 💜 😎#TATAIPLAuction | #TATAIPL | @venkateshiyer | @KKRiders pic.twitter.com/h6AvbPTiML

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) November 24, 2024

And at the auction table at Jeddah, these franchises tried their best to seek continuity. Having retained their Indian core for a huge sum, Mumbai were outbid when it came to going for their own players this time.

CSK bag Conway, Ravindra

But CSK, by contrast, sought as much continuity as possible and ensured Devon Conway who played a role in their title triumph in 2023 came back to the franchise. Similarly Rachin Ravindra, a player with huge potential who the franchise has been managing over the past year, was brought back at the auction. Even their uncapped Mukesh Choudhary and Shaik Rasheed joined them, while they tried unsuccessfully to retain Deepak Chahar, Tushar Deshpande and Sameer Rizvi and Simarjeet Singh. Like KKR, CSK too have 9 players from last season intact.

Gujarat, a team that needs spinners to complement Rashid Khan, ensured R Sai Kishore, Manav Suthar and Jayant Yadav stayed with them fending off interest from others. Thanks to them, they now have 8 players from last season going forward. They didn’t stop there and even pursued Noor Ahmad, Vijay Shankar and Mohit Sharma, but eventually lost out.

Rajasthan Royals, with just a limited purse to work with were outbid at the auction table when they tried to re-sign Ashwin, Boult, Prasidh Krishna, Adam Zampa and Avesh Khan.

It is not just these franchises, even Punjab Kings who were in for a massive rebuild spent a whopping Rs 18 crore to get back star pacer Arshdeep Singh and their lead spinner Harpreet Brar. Similarly, Delhi Capitals who were looking for fresh faces to change their fortunes welcomed back Mukesh Kumar, Jake Fraser-McGurk and Harry Brook – three players who will make their core this time as well. In Shamar Joseph and M Siddharth, Lucknow SuperGiants got two young talents who they invested last season.

Royal Challengers Bengaluru seemed to be the lone team that didn’t bother much about the continuity element. Did their home conditions — small boundaries — dictate their auction strategy? They just got back Josh Hazlewood. Their decision to let go off Will Jacks to Mumbai Indians saw Akash Ambani even leaving his chair and walking up to the RCB table to shake hands.

At Jeddah, franchises showed more than the crores, it was the core that mattered.