IPL’s most-expensive player in 2025, Rishabh Pant, earns almost 10 times more than PSL’s most-expensive cricketer David Warner. Numbers show that PSL’s top 10 earners collectively fail to match Pant’s salary. Even Kohli, Pooran, Klaasen and Venkatesh earn more.
For the first time, the Pakistan Super League (PSL) is running parallely as the Indian Premier League (IPL). Due to the Champions Trophy in February and March, Pakistan were forced to push PSL, which started on April 11 and will run till May 18. The IPL, on the other hand, began on March 22 and the final is slated to take place on May 25 at the iconic Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
Notably, due to the IPL, several marquee players didn’t register for the PSL. The foreigners who are currently playing in the tournament, have gone unsold in the IPL auction, such as David Warner, Daryl Mitchell, Rilee Rossouw and Joshua Little among others. Corbin Bosch, who was a diamond pick player for Peshawar Zalmi, even rejected the franchise after being called by Mumbai Indians in the IPL.
Former Australia batter Warner is the highest-paid cricketer in the PSL. The Multan Sultans cricketer was bought for $300,00, which stands for approximately PKR 8.42 or INR 2.57 crore. It is much lower than what Warner earned in IPL 2024. Delhi Capitals signed him for INR 6.25 crore. The cricketer then went unsold in the IPL 2025 auction. After that, he signed up for PSL and became the most expensive player in the competition.
Interestingly, it is much lower in comparison to the highest-paid cricketer in the IPL. Rishabh Pant, the costliest player in the IPL, earned INR 27 crore in the cash-rich tournament, which is approximately more than INR 24 crore more than Warner. As it stands, the sum of the top 10 top 10 costliest cricketers in PSL does not match Rishabh’s IPL salary. In total, the top 10 cricketers earn approximately INR 19.49 crore, which is lower than that of Virat Kohli, Nicholas Pooran, Heinrich Klaasen, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer and Pant’s IPL salary and slightly more than Arshdeep Singh and Yuzvendra Chahal’s wages.
Top 10 most expensive player in PSL and their salary:
| Most expensive player in PSL | Team | PSL 2025 salary (approx) |
| David Warner | Karachi Kings | INR 2.57 crore |
| Daryl Mitchell | Lahore Qalandars | INR 1.88 crore |
| Babar Azam | Peshawar Zalmi | INR 1.88 crore |
| Fakhar Zaman | Lahore Qalandars | INR 1.88 crore |
| Shaheen Afridi | Lahore Qalandars | INR 1.88 crore |
| Saim Ayub | Peshawar Zalmi | INR 1.88 crore |
| Naseem Shah | Islamabad United | INR 1.88 crore |
| Mohammad Rizwan | Multan Sultan | INR 1.88 crore |
| Matthew Short | Islamabad United | INR 1.88 crore |
| Shadab Khan | Islamabad United | INR 1.88 crore |
