Indian Premier League is the biggest and cash rich T20 cricket league in the world and participating clubs and players also make decent money from 45 days of tournament. The most expensive player in 2016 IPL edition is Virat Kohli who plays for Royal Challengers Bangalore and earns 15 crore rupees. Recently team owners retained cricketers for 9th IPL season and Kohli is retained by RCB.
BCCI released the actual salary cap of top players retained by franchises. Virat Kohli’s actual price is 12.5 crore INR as per the rules of first player retaining policy. But Kohli makes more money than this and became the highest paid cricketer in VIVO Indian Premier League.
The second highest paid player in IPLT20 is India’s limited over captain and Team Pune’s captain MS Dhoni and Sunrisers Hyderbad star opener Shikhar Dhawan. Both these players earn 12.5 crore rupees. Dhoni was used to play for Chennai Super Kings but due to the ban of two years on CSK, team Pune attained MSD in players draft. Let’s have a look at the top 10 earners of IPL 2016.
Top 10 earning players in VIVO IPL 2016
| S.No | Player | Country | Team | Salary (INR) |
| 1 | Virat Kohli | India | Royal Challengers Bangalore | 15 Crore |
| 2 | Shikhar Dhawan | India | Sunrisers Hyderabad | 12.5 Crore |
| MS Dhoni | India | Team Pune | 12.5 Crore | |
| 3 | Rohit Sharma | India | Mumbai Indians | 11.5 Crore |
| 4 | Gautam Gambhir | India | Kolkata Knight Riders | 10 Crore |
| 5 | Keiron Pollard | West Indies | Mumbai Indians | 9.7 Crore |
| 6 | AB De Villiers | South Africa | Royal Challengers Bangalore | 9.5 Crore |
| Suresh Raina | India | Team Rajkot | 9.5 Crore | |
| 7 | Chris Gayle | West Indies | Royal Challengers Bangalore | 8.4 Crore |
| 8 | Lasith Malinga | Sri Lanka | Mumbai Indians | 8.1 Crore |
| 9 | Sunil Narine | West Indies | Kolkata Knight Riders | 8 Crore |
| Harbhajan Singh | India | Mumbai Indians | 8 Crore | |
| Ajinkya Rahane | India | Team Pune | 8 Crore | |
| 10 | Ravichandran Ashwin | India | Team Pune | 7.5 Crore |