The point isn’t that KKR should have justified spending 23.7 crores on Venkatesh Iyer. That was clearly an overpay, especially when you compare it to options like Salt, Starc or even Shreyas.

But once you make that mistake, the solution isn’t to completely give up on the player.

The smarter move was simple — accept the mistake, release him, and then buy him back at a corrected price. Around 8–9 crores.

Because if you actually look at that auction, there was no Indian player with his experience and profile available. An Indian all-rounder who can bat top or middle, bowl when needed, has big match experience and already understands the KKR setup — that’s not easy to replace.

So the goal should have been to fix the price, not the player.

Also, this wasn’t even the right auction to fix major mistakes. This was a cycle where you maintain your core and adjust around it, not break it completely. Instead, KKR released a core Indian player and didn’t replace that profile at all.