Before the list of retained players were announced by the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises were announced on November 15, there were rumours that Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) may have acquired KL Rahul’s services via a trade with Delhi Capitals (DC). But, the wicketkeeper-batter did not join a new franchise and stayed at DC. After the announcement was made, DC head coach Hemang Badani admitted that he knew about the chatter on social media about Rahul moving to KKR which he found amusing as there was no such conversation between the two franchises. The former India batter went on to say that DC had no intention of releasing their top-scorer of previous season.
"I am quite amused by what people keep writing on social media. I keep looking at their thought process. I quietly keep looking at social media and I am like ‘where is this information coming from?’. But, that’s the way it is. People are entitled to their opinion, I respect that. But, we were never going to let go of KL Rahul. He is someone who has given us 500 runs through the season. He has also batted at No. 4, No. 3 and batted at the top. He has scored runs everywhere. There was never an iota of doubt about retaining KL Rahul. It was quite funny that there was intense speculation about the trade. But, KL Rahul is in our house," Badani told Star Sports.
In the mega auction, Rahul was roped in for Rs 14 crore by DC after they could not retain former captain Rishabh Pant via Right to Match (RTM) card.
From 13 innings, he scored 539 runs at an average of 53.90, featuring a century and three fifties. His strike rate was close to 150, his best since 2018 season when he used to represent the Punjab Kings (then Kings XI Punjab).
Delhi Capitals’ list of retained and released players -
Retained Players - Axar Patel, KL Rahul, Karun Nair, Abishek Porel, Tristan Stubbs, Sameer Rizvi, Ashutosh Sharma, Vipraj Nigam, Ajay Mandal, Tripurana Vijay, Madhav Tiwari, Mitchell Starc, T Natarajan, Mukesh Kumar, Dushmantha Chameera, Kuldeep Yadav, and Nitish Rana (traded in)
DC Released Players - Mohit Sharma, Faf du Plessis, Sediqullah Atal, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Manvanth Kumar, Darshan Nalkande, and Donovan Ferreira (traded out).