These are just some of the findings of a research paper published by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) after analysing over 70 players.

This is the first paper on sports management published by the country's premier management institute. This comes ahead of the second auction of new as well as incumbent players for the 2009 season.

IIM-A has, through this paper, provided insights into how players are priced for their

cricketing and non-cricketing actions.

The research paper that uses the regression equation based on the data of 70-odd cricketers has revealed that Andrew Symonds, M S Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh were paid a significant premium for their activities off the field.

Giving examples of how Dhoni and Tendulkar received a premium over other iconic players in the first edition of the IPL, IIM-A professor Deodhar said, "Out of the total price of Rs 6 crore ($1.5 million) and Rs 5 crore ($ 1.12 million) received by Dhoni and Tendulkar respectively, the value of their cricketing attributes was Rs 3.17 crore ($ 705,420) and Rs 2.79 crore ($ 622,213) respectively, and their net crowd pulling business value was about Rs 3 crore ($ 794,580) and Rs 2.24 crore ($ 499,037) respectively."

Deodhar said the analysis is based on simple calculations. "We have used the hedonic pricing method that is used to estimate economic values for ecosystem that directly affect market prices. Here we have come up with cricketing activities such as bowling, batting, wicket-keeping, and non-cricketing activities such as popularity, charisma, crowd pulling ability and controversies," he added.

Did you know

* A player loses out Rs 13, 26, 000 for getting older by a year.

* Increase in T20 batting average by one run fetches an additional Rs 2 lakh ($ 4,658) to the cricketer's final bidding price.

* Number of half centuries in all forms of the game is also found to be rewarding with Rs 1.20 lakh ($ 2,683) for every additional half-century.

* One point increase in the strike rate in one-day internationals fetch Rs 1.40 lakh ($ 3,111).

* For wicketkeepers, an additional stumping contributes about Rs 1.16 lakh ($ 2,595).