Former Team India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has bagged another feather in his cap that he become the first cricketer to earn Rs 150 crore salary from the Indian Premier League.
Currently, Dhoni’s contract with CSK is worth Rs 15 crore and he has till date earned Rs 137.8 crore with the teams, CSK and Rising Pune Supergiants. With CSK choosing to retain him for Rs 15 crores in next edition of IPL, the 39-year-old cricketer has crossed Rs 150-crore mark and will become the first player to do so.
After Dhoni, Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma is second place with Rs 146.6 crore and Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli is next with Rs 143 crore.
Dhoni has played a total of 13 seasons in the IPL since 2008. He was bought by the Chennai Super Kings franchise in 2008 for Rs 6 crore and continued at the same price for three years.
In 2011, the BCCI raised the price of the first choice retention player to Rs 8 crore. With that, he earned Rs 8.25 crore from 2011 to 2013. Before the mega auction in 2014, the BCCI increased the price of a first-choice retention player to Rs 12 crore. In the 2014 and 2015 seasons, Chennai paid Dhoni Rs 12.5 crore.
However, due to fixing, the Chennai Super Kings were banned in the 2016 and 2017 seasons. For those two years, MS Dhoni played for the Rising Pune Super Giants. Even then, he earned Rs 12.5 crore a year. For the last three years (2018,19,20) Dhoni has received Rs. 15 crores.