Cricket rules the roost, it has everything, money, fame and athletes who have god-level agility and are financial powerhouses due their valuable utility and price to performance ratio. Yet, it wasn’t a Virat Kohli, who stands as an absolute titan with a record 8,661 IPL runs, or MS Dhoni, the iconic captain who was rated as the most valuable player in Indian sports.
It was a Kabaddi player from Punjab who got the honours in the inaugural Fanatic Sports Hurun India’s Most Valuable Sports Teams 2026 report.
The crown rests firmly on the head of the 36-year-old Maninder Singh all thanks to his astronomical statistics compared to the cricketers.
Hurun India Athlete Performance Score
The metrics on which the athletes were rated is called Hurun India Athlete Performance Score. This multi-factored metric was designed to provide a cross-sport, unified blueprint to consistently evaluate a star’s on-field impact, longevity, and statistical dominance relative to their peers.
When the numbers from India’s six major professional leagues were aggregated, the results shattered the cricket-centric narrative:
Virat Kohli topped the Indian Premier League (IPL) rankings with a spectacular score of 617 points.
Sunil Chhetri led the Indian Super League (ISL) football charts with 905 points.
Maninder Singh, raider for the Patna Pirates in the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), recorded an astronomical, break-the-scale score of 2,055 points.
Maninder didn’t just edge out India’s most celebrated multi-millionaire athletes; he completely redefined the parameters of individual dominance. He is the only player across the entire 1,323-athlete database to crack the historic 2,000-point threshold, putting him a staggering 9.7% clear of his closest multi-sport contemporaries.
Why is Maninder truly the league leader?
To understand why Hurun’s framework values Maninder so highly, one must look at the brutal efficiency of his career. Kabaddi is fundamentally an indigenous, high-impact sport where physical longevity is incredibly rare. Yet, at 36 years old, the raider, who has been with multiple teams in the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) has turned the mat into his personal kingdom.
With 1,584 total career points and 1,568 pure raid points, Maninder holds the gold standard in PKL history. In a sport where matches are won and lost on the absolute razor-edge of an attack, he has maintained a high-output, low-error matrix across 165 matches.
While cricket allows for calculated intervals and situational pacing, Kabaddi demands relentless explosive output every 30 seconds. Maninder’s ability to anchor a franchise’s entire offensive matrix over multiple seasons gives him a mathematical value that outpaces the contribution of standard top-order batters or wicket-keepers.