Former Indian and Kolkata Knight Riders’ cricketer Gautam Gambhir has appreciated the move of SRK’s co-owned franchise to retain their former captain and wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik ahead of the upcoming edition of the Indian Premier League.
Recently, ahead of the mini-auction for IPL 2020, which will take place next month, KKR released only 5 players – Tom Banton, Chris Green, Nikhil Naik, M Siddharth, and Siddhesh Lad. Dinesh Karthik, the former skipper of KKR had a bad season during IPL 2020. He even stepped down from the captaincy position and could only score 169 runs in 14 innings across various positions. However, the team showed immense faith in him and retained him for the upcoming edition of the IPL.
? Meet the Retained Knights for #IPL2021#KKR #Cricket pic.twitter.com/dkW857CWX8
— KolkataKnightRiders (@KKRiders) January 20, 2021
Gautam Gambhir lauded the decision of Kolkata Knight Riders to retain Dinesh Karthik. Speaking on Star Sports show ‘Cricket Connected’, Gautam Gambhir took a dig at RCB, who released a lot of players, while retaining only 12.
“Dinesh Karthik had a very bad season last year. He was also removed from the captaincy, but despite that if you have retained him, it shows that the franchise is backing you. And because of that your confidence increases, and that is the difference between KKR and RCB,”
Furthermore, Gambhir said that he agrees with all the franchises including his former team KKR, who have retained their main players, and have only released what he termed as ‘excess baggage’. He said:
“I am in agreement with all those franchisees who have not released too many players. It shows you have kept confidence in your players. This is called releasing just the excess baggage. So, it is not that surprising. The core is still there, they have not done too many changes,”
He added:
“They might probably take one or two players and might have their eyes on them if they can get them. If you see, the playing XI is as it is. Probably all the players they have released were not part of their first playing-XI”
