Kolkata Knight Riders top retention Rinku Singh wished team owner and ‘King of Bollywood’ Shah Rukh Khan in a unique fashion.
Bollywood star and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) owner Shah Rukh Khan celebrated his 59th birthday on Saturday (November 2). One of those to wish the ‘King of Bollywood’ was KKR’s number one retention on IPL 2025 Retention Day last week – young batter Rinku Singh.
Rinku Singh took to Instagram to convey a heartfelt message to Shahrukh Khan, expressing his admiration and love for the iconic actor. His post read: “Aapko inse pyaar hoga, mujhe toh mohabbat hain. Janamdivas ki shubhkamnaye @iamsrk sir. Puri duniya mein pyaar aur khushi hamesha baatne ke liye bohot bohot dhanyawaad. Love you sir.”
Rinku was retained for Rs 13 crore by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) – one of the biggest jumps in salary for a cricket in the IPL, up from his current salary of Rs 55 lakh. KKR’s other retention were Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine and Andre Russell for Rs 12 crore each. Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh were signed under the uncapped player category for Rs 4 crore each.
Indian batter Rinku Singh played 14 matches for KKR in IPL 2024, scoring 168 runs at a strike rate of 148.67. In IPL 2024, KKR secured their third title under Shreyas Iyer’s captaincy with an 8-wicket victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad. However, Iyer, who led the Knights in the 17th season, has not been retained.
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) CEO Venky Mysore said that the number of retentions do feel less and there were around 10-11 ‘no brainer’ players that the team management had in mind while deciding on the final retention list.
Speaking to KKR’s website, Mysore said, “Obviously the number of retentions do feel less, because we first build a squad and try to put all pieces in place in order to compete. And when you compete, and particularly in our case, thankfully, we won our third championship, and after that, it becomes even more difficult, because you really want to keep the squad that you have carefully built, who are also the defending champions. So in an ideal world, we would have wanted the whole team back. But the reality is that you cannot, and therefore making those decisions within the parameters provided makes it definitely challenging.
“The no brainers would have been maybe 10 or 11 players, but trying to trim that down to six was very challenging, because it is about the players that you have built an equation with and who have done fantastic for KKR. Sunil has been with us for 12 years while Andre has been with us for 10 years. Varun has been associated with KKR for a long time, since 2019 and Rinku as well has been with us for a significant amount of time, since 2018.
“Harshit has been with the team for three years while Ramandeep came in last year and really made a big impact. So I think it is a good combination. And at the same time, some of the thinking around how you want to handle the auction also came into play, but we thought that this was a really good combination for us. And, obviously leaving out some of the players is never easy,” he concluded.
Kolkata Knight Riders retained players: Rinku Singh (13cr), Varun Chakaravarthy (12cr), Sunil Narine (12cr), Andre Russell (12cr), Harshit Rana (4cr), Ramandeep Singh (4cr)
