Mahendra Singh Dhoni brought about a revolution in Indian cricket after leading the Indian team to he 2007 T20 World Cup win. BCCI tried to capture the attention generated among the fans for T20 cricket and launched the Indian Premier League after that year. IPL’s first season happened in 2008 and MS Dhoni emerged as the most expensive pick in the auction as Chennai Super Kings splurged INR 6 Crores for his services.
The Ranchi-based wicket-keeper batsman is a part of Chennai Super Kings at the moment as well, and in the ten seasons that he has played for CSK, Dhoni has led the team to the Top 4 every time. He played a couple of seasons for Rising Pune Supergiant, but those two seasons were definitely not so memorable for the fans of Dhoni.
Speaking of Dhoni’s earnings in the IPL, the former Indian captain stands at the number one position in terms of players who have earned the maximum money in IPL history. The 2013 Champions Trophy winning skipper has made INR 137.8 Crores in 13 years. As per a report by Insidesport.co, MS Dhoni earned INR 6 Crores each for the first three IPL seasons.
Later, the team management hiked his pay in 2011 from 6 Crores to INR 8.28 Crores. Dhoni’s salary stayed the same for three years before Chennai rose it to 12.50 Crores. His salary stayed the same even when he played for Rising Pune Supergiant in IPL 2016 and 2017. However, when Chennai returned in 2018, they raised his salary to 15 Crores. Although Virat Kohli and Pat Cummins will earn more money than Dhoni in IPL 2020, Thala sits comfortably at the top in the all-time leaderboard.
Shifting our focus to his performance now, Dhoni has played 190 IPL matches, where he has aggregated 4,431 runs. He has taken 95 catches and executed 38 stumpings behind the stumps. Interestingly, Dhoni has registered only 3 ducks in 12 years of IPL! Since his record has been so phenomenal, one can conclude that he deserves the amount that he has made since 2008.
