With its deep-pocketed owners and global appeal, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has shaken up professional cricket, luring top players from five continents with paychecks as big as $111,000 per three-hour match. That's a stunning sum in a sport where domestic leagues have traditionally been an afterthought to the international version of the game.
While cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world (it's played competitively in more than 100 countries), before the IPL launched last year, no domestic league was truly run as a business. But with IPL teams now paying top players as much as $1.55 million for just a five week season, versus $500,000 to $1 million, depending on the country, for an almost year-long slate of national team games, cricket is in the midst of a dramatic shift.
Some of the sport's biggest names are already leaving their national teams to focus on the club game. Included is Sourav Ganguly, the former Indian team captain, who was paid $1.1 million to play for the Kolkata Knight Riders this year. English star Andrew Flintoff is following suit and will retire from Test matches, the traditional five-day version of the international game, next month. This after receiving less than half of his $1.55 million salary from the Chennai Super Kings this year due to a scheduling conflict between his two teams, which was initially going to sideline him for most of the IPL season (turns out an injury during early IPL play caused him to miss both competitions).
The IPL is home to the nine highest-paid cricket players in the world. Tenth ranked Michael Clarke, who left up to $1 million on the table to play club games in his native Australia, is the only member of our list who's not currently on one of the IPL's eight team rosters. Our paycheck figures include club and national team salaries and commercial endorsement income over the last 12 months. For the top stars, endorsements are the most lucrative source of revenue.
Take Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who plays for the Chennai Super Kings and tops our list as cricket's first $10 million-a-year man (that's $5,426 for each run scored). His $8 million in endorsements, from the likes of Reebok, General Electric ( GE - news - people ) and Pepsi ( PEP - news - people ), is 45% higher than any other player. Among all Indian athletes and entertainers, Dhoni's 17 corporate sponsors is second to only Bollywood star and co-owner of the Knight Riders, Shah Rukh Khan.
Cricket's second highest earner is Sachin Tendulkar. The holder of numerous offensive records, Tendulkar, known to fans as Little Master, is considered among the greatest batsman in cricket history. Now in the twilight of his career, he's one of five IPL players who have been bestowed "icon" status, meaning he automatically receives a paycheck 15% larger than his highest paid teammate. Tendulkar's $1.1 million salary from the Mumbai Indians helped push his total earnings to $8 million over the last 12 months.
While runaway player costs have led to strikes and lockouts that have plagued other sports leagues, IPL commissioner Lalit Modi encourages spending on players and punishes teams that don't pay them enough. Last year he fined the Rajasthan Royals $600,000 for spending $300,000 under the league's minimum threshold at an auction where teams selected players. He also raised the salary cap from $5 million per team in 2008 to $7 million this year.
The Kings XI Pubjab's highest-paid player is Yuvraj Singh, who earned just over $1 million from the team and another $4 million from endorsements, primarily from Reebok and Fiat ( FIATY.PK - news - people ), making him the third richest cricketer over the last 12 months. Singh, who's 27 years old, was once awarded a Porsche 911 and $250,000 as a prize for his batting achievements in a tournament.
Expect him to join Dhoni in the driver's seat as cricket's highest-earners for years to come. Advertisement
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