Leg and Off: Should Venkatesh Iyer be appointed KKR captain after IPL 2025 Auction?
No matter which team you support, it's not easy to make sense of why the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) spent ₹23.75 crore on Venkatesh Iyer.
Even the Lucknow Super Giants bid ₹7.50 crore for him and the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), whose other signings were good, pushed KKR all the way. But that amount for someone who hasn't even played international cricket in over two years is remarkable.
Venkatesh came in the all-rounders' set but he doesn't bowl anymore due to the Impact Player rule where, especially in a team like KKR with so many options, his medium pace is just not required. He's an excellent batter, but is that enough?
Things start to make more sense when you consider one ignored aspect - captaincy. Is there any chance KKR, who lost Shreyas Iyer at an even higher price at the auction and didn't sign any other obvious captaincy options, would look at Venkatesh to fill-in the leadership boots at the defending champions?
In this edition of Leg and Off, we discuss the pros and cons of that prospect:
Why Venkatesh Iyer shouldn't be made KKR captain
There isn't any publicly available stat or logic to back KKR pushing Venkatesh as their captain. Unlike most other leaders in the tournament, he'll be put in the spotlight with little to none captaincy experience for Madhya Pradesh or in the IPL.
IPL captaincy of a team defending the title as your first leadership stint would be immense pressure. Add to that the stress that would come because of the price tag, which has consumed many players before, and it sounds far from ideal for the all-rounder.
Most successful leaders in the tournament have had at least some decent experience to back them. With Venkatesh, KKR wouldn't have any recorded modus operandi to build the team around -- it'll just be fresh ideas which is generally not what a title-winning team needs.
KKR have other options for the role, like Sunil Narine, Andre Russell and Quinton de Kock. Although they are overseas players, they have led T20 teams before and have the know-how of dealing with various on and off-field dramas that come with the job.
To further play the Devil's advocate, Venkatesh not having a fixed role--he has batted in various spots according to the requirement--in the team hurts his chances of captaincy. For example, if he starts the season at number four and fails to perform in the first few games, wouldn't he and the team be tempted to try and switch his position to get the captain's confidence back, even if it comes at the cost of another player's settled spot?
Narine, Russell and de Kock, as fixed-role serial winners, come without those risks and it should be something that the management will have to consider before making the decision.
Why KKR can gamble on Venkatesh Iyer
KKR's decision would probably hinge on the management's risk appetite. For, it's not like Narine, Russell, de Kock or even Ajinkya Rahane as prospective captains would come without risks. Shreyas Iyer, who was made captain straight from the auction, was a massive gamble too.
What Venkatesh has over de Kock and Rahane is that he's KKR through and through. He spoke about his wish to be bought back before the auction and his comments since being re-signed have been of a man who understands the weight of the trust bestowed upon him.
He recently also revealed that he was KKR's vice-captain for most of last year when Nitish Rana was absent due to injury. And given that he's a very vocal crickter, there's a good chance some players, especially youngsters, would already be seeing him as a leader.
Then, unlike Russell and Narine, who are almost a decade older than him, Venkatesh has age on his side. Shreyas won the title in his third year -- given that this is almost the same team, there's no reason why Venkatesh can't challenge for the same.
No one can say whether his decision making will be pressure-proof, but there's significant hope in his batting: he has scored half-centuries in each of KKR's playoffs he has played in, including the final and the first qualifier last year.
Venkatesh will also have the support of Chandrakant Pandit, his coach at MP, Bharat Arun, Dwyane Bravo and probably the excellent data analyst Nathan Leamon, to ease his workload of setting bowling plans, field placements and selection choices.
If KKR have to gamble anyway, it's better to do it with someone who knows and loves the franchise which gave him his first big break, has a bond with the coaches and the owners, is in the prime of his career and doesn't let pressure impact his primary skill.