Pat Cummins tops male cricketer rankings alongside highest-paid Australian cricketer list

Test skipper Patrick (Pat) Cummins also continues to top the charts in the best male cricketer rankings for a third successive year, apart from being the highest-paid Australian player.

According to Cricket Australia (CA) confidential rankings list, revealed by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Cummins, who earned $ 2 million (1.8 million earned + captain's bonus of 200K), is ahead of compatriots like Josh Hazlewood, David Warner, and Steve Smith.

These rankings are based on the player's perceived value in all three formats of the game, and cricketers who compete in all three are considered the most valuable.

Cummins is closely followed by Hazlewood, who earned $1.6 million, jumping from fifth last year to number two this time, despite featuring in only two Tests this season.

Warner remains in the third position with earnings of $1.5 million, while Mitchell Starc comes in at the fourth position, raking in $1.4 million.

Smith dropped from the second position to fifth in the rankings and accumulated $1.3 million in his bank this season.

Australia's wonderboy Marnus Labuschagne is currently sixth with $1.2 million, and off-spinner Nathan Lyon completes the top 7 with $1.1 million.

Interestingly, the top seven have as many as six players from New South Wales, and South Africa-born Labuschagne is the anomaly who plays for Queensland.

Last year, the top five in CA's rankings were Cummins, Smith, Warner, Starc, and Hazlewood.

More on these rankings, the national selectors rank these players on various metrics, including their performances over the past year and their chances of selection for the coming year, which may vary wildly according to the tours and tournaments on the calendar.

Talking about the payment system, CA's pay pool for 20 contracted players is a hefty $ 17 million. The minimum contract is $316K, while the marketing pool is somewhere between 50K to 400,000 $. The match payments for players are as followed; Test match; $18,000, ODI: $7,000 and T20I: $5,500.

The contracted players also receive payment for playing overseas matches, a 40 per cent match fee bonus. In addition, the captain gets an additional bonus of $200K.