Moreover, with Rinku Singh bagging INR 13 Crore, the highest from the lot, the franchise also retained the services of their core overseas options in Andre Russell and Sunil Narine, both earning INR 12 Crore each. With this, the IPL 2024 title winners became only the second to make all six retentions ahead of the mega auction, apart from Rajasthan Royals. Below is the list of six players retained by Kolkata Knight Riders with their respective salaries. List of players retained by Kolkata Knight Riders ahead of IPL 2025 mega auction:

Player Names	Salaries
Rinku Singh	INR 13 Crore
Sunil Narine	INR 12 Crore
Andre Russell	INR 12 Crore
Varun Chakaravarthy	INR 12 Crore
Harshit Rana	INR 4 Crore
Ramandeep Singh	INR 4 Crore

With that, the Kolkata-based franchise has spent INR 57 Crore out of their INR 120 Crore purse for retaining six players ahead of the IPL 2025 season. It would mean that they will have INR 51 Crore to spend to get the best of the talent in the mega auction, to build their squad for the next year. List of players released by Kolkata Knight Riders ahead of IPL 2025 mega auction: Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Phil Salt, Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Venkatesh Iyer, Vaibhav Arora, KS Bharat, Chetan Sakariya, Mitchell Starc, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Allah Ghazanfar, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Jason Roy, Gus Atkinson, Mujeeb Ur Rahman