Kolkata is pleased to retain majority of the players: Brendon McCullum

Kolkata Knight Riders head coach Brendon McCullum is pleased to retain most of the players ahead of the IPL auction. The coach believes that the team will be at its best in the 14th edition of IPL.

Australia’s star bowler Pat Cummins is one the cricketers the team decided to retain. Cummins was acquired for a whopping amount of 15.5 crores last season. This made him one of the most expensive foreign players in the history of the Indian Premier League. However, Cummins managed to pick up only 12 wickets in 14 games at an economy rate of 7.86. His best figures were 4/34. The Australian could not make much of an impact for the Kolkata Knight Riders.

It will be interesting to see how the Australian performs in the forthcoming season. In the Border Gavaskar Series, Pat Cummins was the Man of the Series after claiming 21 wickets throughout the four-match series. No other cricketer grabbed more wickets in the series than the Australia pacer. Cummins proved everyone why he is the number one bowler in Test cricket.

Kolkata will be very competitive this year: Brandon McCullum

KKR also released Tom Banton and Chris Green. The team has decided to keep fast bowler Lockie Ferguson and West Indies duo Andre Russell and Sunil Narine in the squad. In the 13th edition, Kolkata Knight Riders were quite unfortunate for missing the playoffs due to net run-rate. The team finished the season at the fifth spot on the points table. The management had also opted for a captaincy change in the middle of the season. Dinesh Karthik handed over the captaincy reins to England ODI captain Eoin Morgan. KKR have won the IPL twice in 2012 and 2014, and both the victories came under the captainship of former cricketer Gautam Gambhir.

KKR retained players

Eoin Morgan, Dinesh Karthik, Pat Cummins, Shubman Gill, Andre Russell, Kuldeep Yadav,  Nitish Rana, Rahul Tripathi, Varun Chakravarthy, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Lockie Ferguson, Shivam Mavi, Prasidh Krishna, Sandeep Warrier, Tim Seifert, Rinku Singh.

KKR Released players

Siddesh Lad, Nikhil Naik, M Siddharth, Tom Banton, Chris Green.

READ MORE Cricket articles here!