Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Mahendra Singh Dhoni pronunciation (born 7 July 1981) is an Indian cricketer and the current captain of the Indian national cricket team and the Chennai Super Kings cricket team. He made his One Day International (ODI) debut in December 2004 against Bangladesh, and a year later played his first Test, this time against Sri Lanka.

He is captain of India in all three forms of the game and also led the team to their first ever bilateral ODI series wins in Sri Lanka and New Zealand. Under Dhoni's captaincy India became the first team after a gap of more than 20 years to whitewash Australia in a Test series. Dhoni also led the Indian team to the number one position in ICC rankings in Test cricket for the first time. Under his captaincy, India won the 2007 ICC World Twenty20, CB Series of 2007–08, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2008 and 2010 against Australia 2–0, Asia cup 2010 and 2011 World Cup. His Test, ODI record is best among all the Indian captains to date. He also captained Chennai Super Kings to victory in the recent 2011 IPL and in the Champions League. He was named as the captain of ICC World Test and ICC ODI teams for 2009. In the final of the 2011 Cricket World Cup, he hit 91 not out of just 79 balls to lead India to victory. For his outstanding batting in the final, he was awarded as the man of the match.

Dhoni has also been the recipient of many awards including the ICC ODI Player of the Year award in 2008 and 2009 (the first Indian player to achieve this feat), the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award and the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour in 2009. In 2009 Dhoni topped the list of world’s top 10 earning cricketers compiled by Forbes and he has been ranked as 31st richest sportsman in the world according to the Forbes Highest Paid Athletes for the year 2012. Dhoni’s total earnings are estimated to be USD 26.5 million according to Forbes. Thus he has became the richest Indian sportsman surpassing Sachin Tendulkar. The TIME magazine added him in its "Time 100" list of 100 most influential people of 2011. SportsPro has rated MS Dhoni as the 16th most remarkable athlete in the world.