Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) broke the bank to acquire their star all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer on Day 1 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 mega auction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Heading into the auction, KKR along with Rajasthan Royals, had no right-to-match card option available after retaining the maximum of six players. In the auction, KKR lost out on players such as Shreyas Iyer and Mitchell Starc, and in the end, the franchise went all out to avail Venkatesh Iyer, who was a part of their IPL winning squad this year.

In the auction, a huge bidding war broke out for Iyer between KKR and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). In the end, Venky Mysore and KKR had the winning bid of INR 23.25 crore. Now, the KKR CEO has revealed that Venkatesh Iyer had given them the ultimatum to go after him in the mega auction.

"For us it was about trying to keep our core. We've kept six players and brought 2-3 players back from last year. that was always the kind of thinking and as far as he (Venkatesh) is concerned we definitely did't want to find ourselves in a situation where we may not be able to bing him back," Venky Mysore said, as per ESPNcricinfo.

"But it always balances itself. When you look at Quinton de Kock (INR 3.60 crore) and Nortje (INR 6.50 crore) that we've picked, it balances off in many ways. On an overall basis, it all works out," he added.

Venkatesh Iyer gave us 'ultimatum'

Venky Mysore revealed that Venkatesh Iyer spoke to them before the auction, saying he would be very said if KKR don't go all out for him in the auction.

"They've proven on the field what they can do. You saw in a championship year, and one year we went to the final as well, in 2021. He (Venkatesh) was highly instrumental and terrific guy in the team. He had clearly given us an ultimatum that, 'If you don't pick me, I will be very sad'. So we didn't want him to be sad, and we're also very happy," said Mysore.

The first day of the mega auction saw as many as three players bag deals of over INR 20 crore each. Rishabh Pant was bought by Lucknow Super Giants for INR 27 crore while Shreyas Iyer went to Punjab Kings for INR 26.25 crore.

When asked if he was surprised with such big price tags, the KKR CEO said, "Not really, to be honest. Players put in their base prices only, we're the ones who are raising the paddle. It's always a function of what the availability of the purse is and in that situation and timing what not. I still maintain that the RTM rule should have been the old rule."

Prior to the auction, KKR retained Rinku Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh.

In the mega auction, the franchise has so far acquired Venkatesh Iyer, Vaibhav Arora, Anrich Nortje, Quinton de Kock, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Ramanullah Gurbaz and Mayank Markande.

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