Venkatesh Iyer’s IPL price tag: ₹23.75 crore
His average this season: 22.5And no, that's not a typo — it's a plot twist.
Imagine being bought for more crores than your batting average. That’s not just a dip in form — that’s a full-blown sinkhole. Venkatesh Iyer isn’t just carrying the weight of expectations; he's got King Kong chilling on his back, pulling him down with every mistimed slog.
Last year? He was fireworks and frenzy — 370 runs at a strike rate that screamed “superstar” - almost 160!. This year? He’s entered his mysterious sabbatical phase. Mojo? Missing. Contact? Not found. Rewards? Still direct deposit.
Let’s crunch the numbers:
6 innings, 135 runs.
105 of those runs? Came in just two games.
Which means in the other four innings, he’s been about as effective as a chocolate teapot in summer. And Monday? A tragic sequel to an already flopped season. 19 balls. 14 runs. Zero boundaries.
Meanwhile, Sunil Narine was in “Beach cricket mode” smashing everything, and even Ajinkya Rahane looked like he was channeling peak AB de Villiers. Enter Iyer — and suddenly the match looked like it had a built-in slow motion button just for him.
KKR fans? They're not mad. They're heartbroken. The whispers have turned into memes. The memes into labels. And the label? “Fraud.” Oof.
Let’s also take a moment to talk strategy.
KKR said goodbye to:
- Shreyas Iyer — an IPL-winning captain.
- Phil Salt — last season’s chaos engine.
And then they dropped ₹23.75 crore on the hope that Venkatesh Iyer 2.0 would rise like a phoenix.
Spoiler alert: he’s still buffering.
But hey, maybe it's all part of the masterplan. Because what's the IPL without a little madness, a few heartbreaks, and a ₹23.75 crore experiment gone rogue? Just KKR things. Especially without Gautam Gambhir’s poker face in the dugout.