New Delhi: The Indian Premier League (IPL) completed with its retention round before the unannounced IPL 2025 mega auction. All the 10 franchises revealed their choice of players for retention with varied prices on Thursday. A franchise was allowed to retain only six players with a maximum of five capped players and not more than two uncapped players.
A total of 46 players were retained by the 10 franchises with Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders making the use of full allotments of retention, which was six, though both teams used different combinations to name their list. Punjab Kings made the least number of retentions with only two uncapped players were part of the list while Royal Challengers Bangalore made only three retentions with star batter Virat Kohli being their imminent choice.
Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians, Sunrisers Hyderabad, Gujarat Titans, and Lucknow Super Giants have each named five retentions while Delhi Capitals have made four. While the big names such as MI and CSK have retained the services of their respective team captains, there were some who dropped their captains from the squad due to unknown or tactical reasons. Here we take a look at the list of IPL captains released from their respective squad from IPL 2024.
1. Shreyas Iyer (Kolkata Knight Riders)
Shreyas Iyer was one of the most shocking releases of IPL 2025 just a season after guiding the Kolkata Knight Riders to their third IPL title. Many expected the Indian middle order batter to be the likeliest retention choice for KKR if not their top-choice.
However, the team management went with the retentions of Rinku Singh (INR 13 crore), Varun Chakravarthy (INR 12 crore), Sunil Narine (INR 12 crore), Andre Russell (INR 12 crore), Ramandeep Singh (INR 4 crore – uncapped) and Harshit Rana (INR 4 crore – uncapped).
Iyer led KKR in 29 matches across IPL 2022 and IPL 2024 seasons, having won 17 matches, lost 11, and one match had no result, to accumulate a win percentage of 60.71, which is the most successful among all eight captains of KKR’s history, including the likes of Gautam Gambhir (57.43%) and Sourav Ganguly (48.14%).
2. Rishabh Pant (Delhi Capitals)
Rishabh Pant ended his nine-year alliance with the Delhi Capitals after he was released by the franchise. The Indian wicketkeeper-batter was their most capped player (111 matches) and also the team’s leading run-getter of all-time with 3284 runs.
He became the captain of Delhi Capitals ahead of IPL 2021 after then regular skipper Shreyas Iyer was ruled out owing to injury. He continued in the leadership role despite Iyer’s return to the tournament in the second leg. Pant has captained the Delhi outfit in 43 matches across three seasons with 23 wins, 19 defeats and a lone tie registered to his record.
Only former Indian player Virender Sehwag has led the Delhi Capitals (then Delhi Daredevils) has led the franchise in more matches (52) than Pant.
3. Faf du Plessis (Royal Challengers Bengaluru)
Faf du Plessis was appointed the captain of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in IPL 2022 season after star campaigner Virat Kohli relinquished the captaincy duties at the end of the previous season. Under the South African player’s captaincy, RCB won 21 as well as lost 21 matches in the 42 matches across three seasons, and qualified twice for the playoffs. However, the team couldn’t progress past the qualifier 2 stage in those instances (knocked out in Eliminator in IPL 2024).
Du Plessis was released from RCB’s squad, surprisingly, after the franchise announced three retentions in Kohli (for INR 21 crore), Rajat Patidar (for INR 11 crore), and Yash Dayal (INR 5 crore).
4. KL Rahul (Lucknow Super Giants)
KL Rahul’s exit from Lucknow Super Giants squad wasn’t much shocking unlike the case of other captains. One of the points that would give the ‘writing on the wall’ moment was Rahul’s animated conversation with team owner Sanjiv Goenka after LSG’s 10-wicket loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad in a league game.
That incident speculated that Rahul won’t continue and many reports after the tournament suggested that the team management wasn’t keen on retaining their skipper. The Indian wicketkeeper-batter led the franchise in its formative years in 37 matches between 2022 and 2024, recording 20 wins and 17 losses. The franchise qualified to the playoffs in the first two seasons (2022 and 2023), the latter one was guided by Krunal Pandya after Rahul was injured in the midway of the tournament.
5. Shikhar Dhawan/Sam Curran (Punjab Kings)
Shikhar Dhawan announced his retirement from all formats of competitive cricket in August this year. It was crystal clear that Punjab Kings will have a new captain in their side after the news broke out. However, the surprise was the franchise didn’t retain England’s World Cup winner Sam Curran, who shouldered the captaincy responsibility in the last two seasons when Shikhar was unavailable to lead.
In the last season, Dhawan captained the team in only five matches after sustaining a shoulder injury during their match against Sunrisers Hyderabad on April 9, 2024. Curran took the mantle for the rest of the season. This wasn’t the first time Curran stepped up for Shikhar, the 26-year-old English player was seen doing the same in IPL 2023 as well.
Dhawan led Punjab Kings in 17 matches from 2022 to 2024 with only six wins to his name while Curran was the Punjab outfit in 11 games, having won five matches and suffered six defeats in the respective role.
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