Indians, Aussies are the best paid cricketers: Forbes

By Abhishek Manroa

NEW DELHI (TheSportsNext) July 28, 2012: Indian and Australian players are the best paid cricketers in the latest list published by the Forbes Magazine.

The top five spots in the Forbes Magazine’s list of best-paid cricketers are occupied by Indian cricketers including Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir  (third highest-paid, 7.3 million US dollars) and Virat Kohli (fourth, 7.1 million US dollars).

The highest paid cricketer in the world is Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who led the Chennai Super Kings to two straight Indian Premier League (IPL) titles in 2010 and 2011 besides captaining the Team India to ICC World Cup 2011 title glory, made whopping 26.5 million US dollars last year.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s on-field play contributed only 3.5 million US dollars in his total earning as the Indian skipper has a Grade A national contract with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) which fetches him a basic salary of 200,000 US dollars which doesn’t include match fees and bonuses. MS Dhoni gets over 500,000 US dollars in match fees and bonuses. Moreover, MSD is one of the highest paid cricketers in the Indian Premier League as he earns about 125,000 US dollars per IPL match and the Chennai Super Kings captain is yet to miss a single game since June, 2011 and represented his franchise in 23 matches during the period where 19 were the IPL games while four others were the Champions League Twenty20 matches.

That’s not all! The Team India captain has an impressive list of nearly 25 endorsements including PepsiCo, Reebok, and Sony which adds over 23 million US dollars into his bank account.

According to several surveys, Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the most popular television endorser in India in the Year 2010 when he surpassed the glittering Bollywood stars with a huge margin.

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, who was the best-paid cricketer before emergence of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, comes second in the Forbes list as the Little Master made 18.6 million US dollars last year.

As against Dhoni’s 25 endorsements, Sachin Tendulkar’s list of sponsors has 16 brands including Adidas, Coca-Cola, Castrol and Toshiba, who paid a total of 16.5 million US dollars for the living legend’s services for the game of cricket.

The best-paid international cricketer, other than India, in the list of Forbes Magazine is Australian all-rounder Shane Watson with earnings of 5.9 million US dollars. Watson is followed by Aussie skipper Michael Clarke (4.9 million US dollars), fast bowler Brett Lee (4.8 million US dollars), and Ricky Ponting (4.1 million US dollars).