Highest annual earnings for a cricket player (male, current)

India captain Virat Kohli made $26 m (£21 m) in prize money ($2 m; £1.6 m) and endorsements ($24 m; £19.4 m) in the 12 months to 1 June 2020, according to Forbes magazine’s World’s Highest-Paid Athletes 2020 survey. For the fifth year in a row, Forbes confirmed Kohli as the only cricketer in the top 100 athletes from across the sporting world. He landed at No.66 thanks to a playing contract worth $1 m (£809,300) annually and lucrative endorsement deals with the likes of Audi, Colgate, Google and Puma.

Tennis ace Roger Federer was the No.1-ranked athlete overall, making $106.3 m (£86 m) in prize money ($6.3 m; £5.1 m) and endorsements ($100 m; £80.9 m) in the year to 1 June 2020. Federer took the No.1 spot from the previously top-ranked soccer players Cristiano Ronaldo ($105 m; £84.9 m) and Lionel Messi ($104 m; £84.1 m), with Neymar ($95.5 m; £77.3 m) completing soccer’s hat-trick at No.4 and basketball’s LeBron James ($88.2 m; £71.4 m) rounding out the top five.

Kohli (b. Delhi, 5 November 1988), one of the finest players of his generation and idolized by Indian cricket supporters, had scored 7,318 Test match, 12,040 One-Day International and 2,928 Twenty20 International runs – averaging over 50 runs per innings in all three international formats - as of 6 February 2021. He married Indian actress Anushka Sharma in 2017.