It has happened quite often in the IPL that the teams release certain players after one or two below par seasons and those players turn out to be the game changers for the other franchises.
If we talk about Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), they have made at least two releases in their history which they would have regretted a lot, because the players whom they released went on and scored plenty of runs for their next respective franchises.
Here are the 2 costliest releases made by KKR in IPL history –
Chris Gayle
Chris Gayle was always one of the biggest hitters of the cricket ball, right since the time he started his T20 career, but before 2011, he hadn’t done enough in the IPL to become a household name in India. KKR was the first IPL team Gayle played for and given his indifferent performances in the first few seasons, KKR let him go ahead of 2011 mega auction.
Chris Gayle’s next team was Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and at RCB, Gayle shattered most of the batting records of the league. Gayle created the record of hitting the most number of sixes at the RCB. The left hander also holds the record of having the highest IPL individual score to his name, which is 175 against Pune Warriors India (PWI).
Shubman Gill
The mistake that KKR had made with Gayle, they repeated the exact same mistake with Gill ahead of the 2022 mega auction when they didn’t retain Gill even though they had the option to do so.
Shubman Gill was then signed by Gujarat Titans, the new franchise before the mega auction, and Gill helped the Titans win the league title in their very first season itself. Now in IPL 2023, Gill has gone a step further and piled on more than 800 runs to power Gujarat into the final again, where they will face CSK on Sunday.
