India vs UAE T20I Head-to-Head: Record & Results

Two Twenty20 internationals, nine years apart, both in the Asia Cup, both won by India by nine wickets. The second, at Dubai in September 2025, is the most lopsided match either side has been involved in: the UAE were bowled out for 57 and India passed it in 4.3 overs. Together the two matches lasted a little over four hours of playing time.

The 57 is the lowest total any side has made against India in the format. India's chase, twenty-seven balls, is the fastest they have completed. Both records were set in the same evening at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, and both were set against a side whose players were mostly playing on their own home ground.

That is the peculiar shape of this fixture. India have played more Twenty20 cricket in the Emirates than in most countries — two relocated Indian Premier League seasons, two Asia Cups, a Champions Trophy — but they have played the UAE only twice, and both meetings came about because a tournament draw put them in the same group. The three one-day internationals the sides have played are covered on the India versus UAE ODI record page.

Both matches

Date	Ground	Tournament	Result
3 Mar 2016	Shere Bangla Stadium, Mirpur	Asia Cup	UAE 81/9; India 82/1 (10.1). India by 9 wickets
10 Sep 2025	Dubai International Cricket Stadium	Asia Cup	UAE 57 (13.1); India 60/1 (4.3). India by 9 wickets

Mirpur, 3 March 2016

The 2016 Asia Cup was the first edition played as a Twenty20 tournament, staged in Bangladesh as preparation for the World Twenty20 that followed it. The UAE qualified through a play-off and were the only Associate side in the group.

They batted first at Mirpur and made 81 for 9 in their twenty overs. Bhuvneshwar Kumar took two for 8; Jasprit Bumrah took two as well. India chased it in 10.1 overs, Rohit Sharma making 39 from 28 balls and Yuvraj Singh finishing unbeaten on 25 from 14. Rohit took the award.

The margin in balls remaining — fifty-nine — was India's largest in the format at the time. It held for nine years, and then the record was broken by the same opponent.

Dubai, 10 September 2025

India opened the 2025 Asia Cup against the hosts at Dubai. They bowled, and the UAE were bowled out for 57 in 13.1 overs.

Kuldeep Yadav took four wickets for 7 runs, three of them in one over, and took the award. Shivam Dube took three for 4. Only two UAE batters reached double figures. The innings lasted seventy-nine balls.

India then made 60 for 1 in 4.3 overs. Abhishek Sharma made 30 from 16 and Shubman Gill 20 from 9. Twenty-seven balls, and the match was finished inside the first session of what had been scheduled as a full evening's cricket.

Three separate records came out of it. The 57 is the lowest total made against India in Twenty20 internationals. The 4.3-over chase is India's quickest completed pursuit in the format. And the combined seventeen and a bit overs made it one of the shortest completed Twenty20 internationals played between an ICC Full Member and an Associate side.

The UAE were captained by Muhammad Waseem, their most experienced batter, and the result was harsh on a side that had qualified for the tournament on merit. India went on to win the tournament.

Nine years, two formats of the same tournament

The two matches bracket a change in what the Asia Cup is. The 2016 edition was the first played as a Twenty20 competition, scheduled that way because a World Twenty20 followed it in the same country weeks later; the 2025 edition was also a Twenty20 tournament, for the same reason, ahead of a World Cup.

In between, the Asia Cup reverted to fifty overs twice — in 2018 and 2023 — because the next global event in each case was a fifty-over World Cup. The tournament changes format according to what the sides need to prepare for, which is unusual among major competitions and which is the direct cause of this fixture existing in two formats rather than one. The UAE's fifty-over meetings with India, all three of them, are on the ODI page linked above.

The individual figures

All the ball-by-ball data for both matches exists, so these are complete fixture aggregates rather than a sample. They are also small, and stated as such rather than dressed up as a leaderboard.

Player	Side	Runs	Balls	Highest
Shaiman Anwar	UAE	43	48	43
Rohit Sharma	India	39	28	39
Abhishek Sharma	India	30	16	30
Yuvraj Singh	India	25	14	25*
Aryansh Sharafu	UAE	22	17	22

Shaiman Anwar leads the fixture on runs, which is the sort of thing that happens when the winning side has never needed to bat for more than eleven overs. His 43 from 48 balls at Mirpur was more than half his side's total in that innings.

Bowler	Side	Wickets	Runs conceded	Best
Kuldeep Yadav	India	4	7	4
Shivam Dube	India	3	4	3
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	India	2	8	2
Jasprit Bumrah	India	2	42	2

Kuldeep's four for 7 is the best analysis in the fixture and among the most economical four-wicket returns India have recorded anywhere in the format. Dube's three for 4 came from his two overs of medium pace and is a return he has not approached before or since. No UAE bowler has taken more than one wicket against India.

The side India keep not playing

It is worth setting the two results against what the UAE side actually is, because "bowled out for 57" invites a conclusion the wider record does not support.

The UAE played their first Twenty20 international in March 2014 and have since become one of the busiest Associate sides in the format, largely because their home grounds are always available and their board can host at short notice. Muhammad Waseem, who captained in the Dubai match, passed 3,000 runs in Twenty20 internationals during that Asia Cup — the first UAE player to do so, and among the fastest anyone has reached the mark. He and Junaid Siddique share the record for UAE appearances at the T20 World Cup.

They have qualified for the World Cup twice, in 2014 and 2022, in both cases through a qualifying tournament in which they beat sides with far deeper structures behind them. A team that does that is not a team that makes 57 as a matter of course; they made it once, on an evening when Kuldeep Yadav found turn and bounce on a surface his own team had assessed an hour earlier.

Why India have not played the UAE more often

The UAE's Twenty20 pathway is broader than their fifty-over one: the T20 World Cup qualifying structure gives Associate sides more routes into the main draw than the ODI equivalent does, and the UAE have used them, appearing at the 2014 and 2022 editions. That is how they reached the 2016 Asia Cup and the 2025 one — through qualifying competitions, not through an invitation.

But qualifying gets them into a tournament, not into India's group in it, and the group draw has produced this fixture exactly twice. Outside tournaments there is no mechanism at all. India schedule bilateral Twenty20 series against Full Members and, occasionally, against Associates whose boards can fund the visit; the Emirates Cricket Board's commercial model rests on hosting other countries' cricket, which is a different business entirely.

The result is a fixture that has generated two India records in two matches and shows no sign of generating a third. India's Twenty20 records in full sit on the most T20I runs for India leaderboard and the best T20I bowling figures list, and the game's structure in the country is set out on the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Both matches fall inside the period for which the complete public ball-by-ball record exists, so the results table and both individual tables are computed directly from the deliveries bowled. The aggregates are complete for the fixture: there are no other India-UAE Twenty20 internationals.

The three records claimed here — the lowest total against India in the format, India's fastest completed chase, and the fifty-nine balls remaining at Mirpur being India's largest such margin at the time — follow the match reports published at the time of each game and are counts rather than estimates. Where a captain or an award is named it comes from the scorecard or the squad list for that tournament.

Wicket counts exclude run-outs. A bowler's runs here carry wides and no-balls; byes and leg byes are charged to the team, not to him. Complete to the end of August 2026; the sides have not met in a Twenty20 international since 10 September 2025.