NEW YORK: Cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni is among Forbes magazine's 100 highest-paid athletes in the world, the only Indian sportsman on the list that has been topped again by American boxer Floyd Mayweather and includes golfer Tiger Woods, tennis star Roger Federer and Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo. Dhoni has been ranked 23rd on the Forbes list of The World's Highest-Paid Athletes 2015,
dropping a notch from his ranking of 22 last year. Dhoni's total earnings stood at $ 31 million, including amount from salary/winnings at $ 4 million and endorsements worth $ 27 million. The 33-year old cricketer retired from Test cricket at the end of 2014, ceding his Indian national team captainship to fellow star Virat Kohli but remains India's skipper at the One Day International and T20 levels. "He led India to the semifinal round of the 2015 Cricket World Cup before suffering a loss to eventual champion Australia, and in May the Chennai Super Kings went to the IPL Finals for the sixth time in his eight years as team captain," Forbes said. He is also co-producing 'M.S Dhoni: The Untold Story,' an upcoming biopic that has been "fraught with delays but has already funneled some three millions into the Indian star's pockets". The earnings figures include salaries, prize money and bonuses paid out between June 2014 and June 2015.