KKR have released one of their most trusted soldiers, Andre Russell, and has made him rejoin the franchise as their power coach. While this adds depth to their coaching staff, it takes a lot from their squad for the upcoming season.
Matheesha Pathirana and Cameron Green in IPL.(PTI)
The Kolkata Knight Riders walk into the IPL 2026 mini-auction with the biggest purse and the biggest identity question in the league. They’ve kept their spin-heavy soul but stripped away most of the muscle that made their batting and death bowling effective.
KKR have 12 players going into the auction – including Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Ajinkya Rahane, Manish Pandey, Rovman Powell, Sunil Narine, Ramandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Varun Chakaravarthy, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, and Umran Malil – and head to the auction with INR 64.30 cr, 13 slots to fill, and as many as six overseas spaces open.
Where KKR stand before the auction
On paper, they can already field something closer to a starting XI: Rahane and Angkrish at the top, Manis and Rinku through the middle, Powell as the enforcer, Narine, Anukul, and Varun as the spin-core, backed by a pace trio of Harshit, Vaibhav, and Umran. It is a structure tilted heavily towards spin and Indian seam, with little craft at the death.
The release list tells you what they’ve chosen to move on from – Russell, Iyer, Quinton de Kock, Anrich Nortje, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, and Spencer Johnson, among others. They have effectively torn out their power-hitting, all-round regime, their top-order wicketkeeper batters, and the overseas quicks. The three big gaps are obvious for the three-time champions: a seam-bowling all-rounder, a first-choice wicketkeeper batter, and a reliable death-overs specialist.
For the Knights, this will not be a plug a couple of holes auction; it is about reestablishing their core and redefining their identity.
Five realistic auction targets for KKR1. Cameron Green
If KKR want to replace Andre Russell’s dual-impact presence with one player, Cameron Green is as close as the 2026 pool offers. He comes into this auction with proven IPL performances for the Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
At Eden Gardens, Green slots perfectly at number four or number five behind a solid top three, giving Rinku the freedom to stay in his favourite finishing window. His ability to bowl two overs up top and one in the middle also means KKR can manage Narine’s overs more aggressively. Green will expectably go into the INR 18-20 cr bidding zone, but with INR 64.30 cr in hand, KKR are one of the few sides who can genuinely stretch that far without wrecking the rest of their auction.
2. Matheesha Pathirana
With Nortje and Johnson released, KKR need an overseas fast bowler who would ideally be effective in the death overs. Matheesha Pathirana, with an INR 2 cr base price after his CSK stint, is that profile in neon lights. His slingy, late-dipping yorkers are perfectly suited to Eden’s true surface, where the mishits also sail over the ropes; the only way to fight that is to go under the bat.
Pathirana gives the repeatable death overs execution. He will not be cheap; a bidding war with CSK and at least one of the other franchises with good purses feels inevitable. But if KKR walk out of the auction with Green and Pathirana, their spine suddenly looks like a contender’s.
3. Tushar Raheja
This is where KKR might need to be both brave and smart. The obvious names in the wicketkeeper set – de Kock, Bairstow, Gurbaz and even Finn Allen are tempting, but they need to look at efficiency while effectively slotting a key gap.
Josh Inglis would have been a strong option on quality alone, but he is expected to be available for only around 25% of the IPL due to Australian commitments ruling him out as a primary keeper.
This is where Tushar Raheja becomes a viable option. The left-handed Tamil Nadu keeper is set at a base price of INR 30 lakh. Over the last domestic cycle, he has been one of the most explosive Indian T20 batters in circulation – top run-scorer in TNPL 2025 with 488 runs at an average of above 60, and a strike rate north of 180 across nine innings in that campaign.
For KKR, he ticks multiple boxes at once: he is Indian and in form in Indian conditions. Even if they pair him initially with a more experienced overseas keeper-batter like Finn Allen, Raheja is the project pick who can define their next cycle.
4. Finn Allen
Finn Allen sits with an INR 2 crore base price and a T20 strike rate in the mid-160s, one of the most aggressive top-order batters available globally. Allen’s presence in the top with another opener like Rahane, or if they can get Raheja, will give them the required firepower at the top. They can even pair Allen with Narine, if they still look to persist with that experiment.
Crucially, Allen is a wicketkeeper, so even if Raheja is groomed as the long-term first-choice, KKR get in-built cover without burning another slot. You live with some volatility in exchange for games where the contest is essentially broken by the end of the power play.
5. Left-arm pace: Joshua Little/Fazalhaq Farooqi
KKR’s current pace group – Harshit, Vaibhav, and Umran- is entirely right-arm. IN modern T20, not having at least one left-arm option is a deliberate choice; for KKR, it currently feels like a gap. The auction pool offers several realistic targets in the category, including Joshua Little and Fazalhaq Farooqi, at base prices of INR 75 lakhs and INR 1 cr bonds, respectively.
Little’s angle across the right-hander and heavy back-of-a-length bowling suit Eden’s dimensions, while Farooqi brings new-ball swing and yorker at the death. Either of them, alongside Pathirana, would give KKR a versatile pace attack that could be tuned to the opposition and venue.
If KKR comes out of the auction with a core something like Green, Pathirana, Allen, Raheja, plus one strong left-arm quick and a couple of smart uncapped batting all-rounders, the rebuild stops being euphemism. It becomes a genuine second act – a very different KKR, but one that again looks capable of scaring teams in April and May.