Sports desk21 minutes ago
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Kolkata made Venkatesh Iyer (left) the vice -captain and Ajinkya Rahane (right) as captain.
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) has made Ajinkya Rahane the captain for the 18th season of IPL. Venkatesh Iyer, who sold for Rs 23.75 crore in the mega auction, has been made the vice -captain. Team became champions in the 2024 season under the captaincy of Shreyas Iyer, this time he was bought by Punjab Kings in the auction.
Defending champion KKR will start the campaign against RCB at his home ground this time. This time the qualifier-2 and the finals will also be played at the Eden Gardens Stadium in Kolkata due to KKR winning the title.
9th captain of Ajinkya KKR Ajinkya Rahane will be the 9th captain of KKR. Prior to him, Sourav Ganguly, Brendon McCullum, Gautam Gambhir, Jacks Kallis, Dinesh Karthik, ON Morgan, Shreyas Iyer and Nitish Rana have also captained the team. Only 2 of the previous captains could win the trophy for 2 player teams. The team won the title in 2012 and 2014 under the captaincy of Gautam Gambhir. At the same time, Shreyas Iyer made the team champion in 2024.
Ajinkya Rahane has captained 25 matches of IPL. The team won in 9 and lost in 16.
Rahane was released by Chennai Super Kings Ajinkya Rahane played from Chennai Super Kings (CSK) last season. He was released by the franchise before the IPL 2025 mega auction. In the mega auction, KKR bought him a base price for Rs 1.50 crore.
Rahane has also been a part of KKR in 2022. He then scored 133 runs in 7 matches at a strike rate of 103.90. That season he could not put a single fifty. Rahane has so far scored 4642 runs in 185 IPL matches at an average of 30.14. They include 2 centuries and 30 fifty.
Venkatesh Iyer team’s most expensive player Venkatesh Iyer is consistently with the KKR team. However, the franchise had also released Venkatesh last time, but re -bought in mega auction. The Kolkata franchise spent Rs 23.75 crore to re -purchase Venkatesh. At present, Venkatesh is the most expensive player in the team.
Kolkata Squad for IPL 2025
Ajinkya Rahane (captain), Venkatesh Iyer (Vice -captain), Sunil Naren Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarti, Harshit Rana, Ramandeep Singh, Quinton Dickock, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Enrik Nokia, Angaksh Raghuvanshi, Vaibhav Arora, Mayank Markande, Rowman Powell, Manish Pandey, Spencer Johnson, Laviti Sisodia, Sucht Roy, Moin Ali, Umran Malik.