Comparing Dhoni With Mukesh Ambani, Why Stop There?

Came across quite an interesting article which just goes to show how news is made where none is present. :)

Economic Times proves that Statistics is like a bikini: it hides more than it reveals.

Dhoni, they say, gets paid more than Mukesh Ambani.

The chief executive officer of the Men-In-Blue Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has been bagged for Rs 6 crore for the domestic cricket league, has overtaken Mukesh Ambani, chief of India’s largest private sector company, in terms of compensation.

The comparison is not apt but on a per hour basis Dhoni will be paid more than Mr Ambani for the duration of the tournament. ...

Yes, they have disclaimed that this does not include dividends that Mukesh Ambani receives or the other endorsement/team revenue that Dhoni gets [these figures are not comparable]. To give you an idea of what is not included, Ambani's dividend from RIL alone, through his 70 odd crore shares, is nearly 800 cr. per year. I doubt Dhoni makes that much from his endorsements - but considering the price of "Speed" petrol that he endorses, he just might. Kidding.

The way Ambani is paid less than Dhoni - Dhoni gets 6 cr. for 44 days of the tournament (24 hours per day, do the math) - comes to 56K per hour.

MDA, on the other hand, gets a paltry 36K per hour from his 30 cr. salary (minus dividends and all of course) for a 365 day year, with 24 hours a day.

Lots of issues: Dhoni has to live the rest of the year too you know. Plus Mukesh bhai has the power to move his salary up when he wants. And he can issue a gazillion warrants to himself which at current market prices are about er..12,000 cr. in value. And Dhoni gets high compensation for a fairly short career, in comparison with M. But forget that.

And to be honest, I think this is just an eye catching headline and newspapers routinely do this to grab attention. Yet, I would say if we're getting dramatic, why not some more?

• Priya Kumar charges "1.5-2 lakh for a 2-3 hour session", which is about 75K an hour, making her earn more than Dhoni or Mukesh Ambani.
• Pinky Anand, a lawyer, supposedly charged Rs. 2 lakh per hour for a case study.
• Dr. Sudhanshu Bhattacharya charges 3 lakh per operation, which I'd assume runs between 1 and 2 hours. That's around 1.5-3 lakh per hour.
• Shah Rukh Khan charged Rs. 1 crore per episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati, making the hourly rate of 1 crore unbeatable by the cricketer or the oil-petrochem-retail baron.

(I once made Rs. 10,000 is about 5 minutes of trading during some extremely sharp moves. Suitably extrapolated one can easily say this had paid me 120,000 per hour. Statistics and Bikinis.)

I think if we get things down to the nanosecond we might find people who are paid gazillion rupees when extrapolated to an hourly charge.

Just having some fun. I'm sure the Eco Times guys were as well.