India vs Zimbabwe T20I Head-to-Head: Record & Results
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India9 min read
Fifteen Twenty20 internationals, twelve won by India and three by Zimbabwe, and thirteen of the fifteen played at the same ground. The Harare Sports Club has staged every bilateral match between the sides in this format — four series in 2015, 2016, 2024 and 2026 — and the only two exceptions are World Cup fixtures, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in November 2022 and at Chepauk in Chennai in February 2026.
Zimbabwe's three wins share a shape. Every one came at Harare, every one came with Zimbabwe batting first, and every one was by a runs margin in single or low double figures: ten runs in July 2015, two runs in June 2016, thirteen runs in July 2024. They have never chased down an Indian total in the format, in eight attempts.
India have never hosted Zimbabwe for a bilateral Twenty20 international. The Chennai match of February 2026 was a Super Eight fixture at a World Cup India were staging, and it produced the highest total either side has made against the other: 256 for 4.
Every match in the fixture
| # | Date | Venue | Match | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17 Jul 2015 | Harare Sports Club | 1st T20I | India 178/5; Zimbabwe 124/7. India by 54 runs |
| 2 | 19 Jul 2015 | Harare Sports Club | 2nd T20I | Zimbabwe 145/7; India 135/9. Zimbabwe by 10 runs |
| 3 | 18 Jun 2016 | Harare Sports Club | 1st T20I | Zimbabwe 170/6; India 168/6. Zimbabwe by 2 runs |
| 4 | 20 Jun 2016 | Harare Sports Club | 2nd T20I | Zimbabwe 99/9; India 103/0 (13.1). India by 10 wickets |
| 5 | 22 Jun 2016 | Harare Sports Club | 3rd T20I | India 138/6; Zimbabwe 135/6. India by 3 runs |
| 6 | 6 Nov 2022 | Melbourne Cricket Ground | T20 World Cup | India 186/5; Zimbabwe 115. India by 71 runs |
| 7 | 6 Jul 2024 | Harare Sports Club | 1st T20I | Zimbabwe 115/9; India 102 (19.5). Zimbabwe by 13 runs |
| 8 | 7 Jul 2024 | Harare Sports Club | 2nd T20I | India 234/2; Zimbabwe 134 (18.4). India by 100 runs |
| 9 | 10 Jul 2024 | Harare Sports Club | 3rd T20I | India 182/4; Zimbabwe 159/6. India by 23 runs |
| 10 | 13 Jul 2024 | Harare Sports Club | 4th T20I | Zimbabwe 152/7; India 156/0 (15.2). India by 10 wickets |
| 11 | 14 Jul 2024 | Harare Sports Club | 5th T20I | India 167/6; Zimbabwe 125 (18.3). India by 42 runs |
| 12 | 26 Feb 2026 | Chepauk, Chennai | T20 World Cup | India 256/4; Zimbabwe 184/6. India by 72 runs |
| 13 | 23 Jul 2026 | Harare Sports Club | 1st T20I | Zimbabwe 125/7; India 126/3 (13.2). India by 7 wickets |
| 14 | 25 Jul 2026 | Harare Sports Club | 2nd T20I | India 219/5; Zimbabwe 129 (17.5). India by 90 runs |
| 15 | 26 Jul 2026 | Harare Sports Club | 3rd T20I | India 192/5; Zimbabwe 157/7. India by 35 runs |
Series by series
| Series | Venue | Matches | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 2015 | Harare | 2 | Drawn 1-1 |
| June 2016 | Harare | 3 | India won 2-1 |
| July 2024 | Harare | 5 | India won 4-1 |
| July 2026 | Harare | 3 | India won 3-0 |
Four bilateral series, thirteen matches, and India have won nine of the eleven matches across the last three of them. The 2015 draw is the only series Zimbabwe have not lost, and 2026 is the only one in which they failed to win a match.
Each of the four tours has been sent by India with a squad well short of first choice, and that is not incidental. All four came immediately after or immediately before a major assignment: 2015 came in a gap in the calendar shortly after a tour of Bangladesh, 2016 was a development tour led by MS Dhoni with a squad of almost entirely uncapped or lightly capped players, 2024 began a week after the World Cup final in Barbados, and 2026 came four months after India had retained the World Cup at Ahmedabad.
Zimbabwe's three wins
Harare, 19 July 2015. Zimbabwe made 145 for 7 and bowled India out of the chase for 135 for 9, Chamu Chibhabha taking the player-of-the-match award. It was Zimbabwe's first Twenty20 international win over India, in their fourth attempt, and it levelled a two-match series.
Harare, 18 June 2016. The narrowest result in the fixture. Zimbabwe made 170 for 6 with Elton Chigumbura the difference, India finished on 168 for 6, and two runs decided it. India won the next two matches to take the series, the second of them by three runs — meaning the 2016 series produced two of the three closest results between the sides.
Harare, 6 Jul 2024. Zimbabwe made only 115 for 9 and won by thirteen runs, because India were bowled out for 102 in 19.5 overs. Sikandar Raza took the award. It remains India's lowest Twenty20 international total against Zimbabwe and one of their lowest against anyone.
The common factor is that Zimbabwe have only ever won this fixture by setting a target on a slow Harare surface and then bowling at it. When they have been asked to chase, they have lost eight times out of eight, and their highest successful pursuit of an Indian total in the format does not exist.
The 102 at Harare
India's collapse on 6 July 2024 is the outlier of the whole record. The tour began a week after India had beaten South Africa in a World Cup final, with a squad in which Shubman Gill captained and most of the World Cup side had gone home, and Zimbabwe's 115 for 9 looked like a total India would overhaul without trouble.
Instead Zimbabwe's seam and spin bowled India out inside twenty overs. No Indian batter passed thirty, the wickets went in clusters, and Zimbabwe defended the smallest total anyone has successfully defended against India in the format.
The response over the next four matches was emphatic: 234 for 2, 182 for 4, a ten-wicket win and 167 for 6, with Abhishek Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube taking the individual awards in the four wins. The 234 for 2 on 7 July, the day after the defeat, remains India's second-highest total against Zimbabwe.
Totals: 256 at Chepauk, 99 at Harare
| Score | Ground | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| India's highest | 256/4 | Chepauk, Chennai | 26 Feb 2026 |
| Zimbabwe's highest | 184/6 | Chepauk, Chennai | 26 Feb 2026 |
| India's lowest | 102 | Harare Sports Club | 6 Jul 2024 |
| Zimbabwe's lowest | 99/9 | Harare Sports Club | 20 Jun 2016 |
Both record highs were made in the same match. Chennai in February 2026 produced 440 runs across forty overs, and Zimbabwe's 184 for 6 in reply was a respectable innings that still lost by 72 runs. India needed the win: they had lost their previous Super Eight match to South Africa and had to beat both Zimbabwe and West Indies to reach the semi-finals. The full campaign is on the India at the 2026 T20 World Cup page.
The two lowest scores were both at Harare, which is the other half of the same point: the run-scoring in this fixture tracks the ground far more closely than it tracks either side's form. Zimbabwe's 115 all out at Melbourne in the 2022 T20 World Cup is their lowest all-out total against India.
The 2026 tour
India returned to Harare in July 2026 with a squad captained by Shreyas Iyer, with Tilak Varma as vice-captain and none of the players who had won the World Cup final in March. Zimbabwe, captained by Sikandar Raza, were beaten by seven wickets, 90 runs and 35 runs.
Vaibhav Suryavanshi was player of the series with 151 runs, having turned fifteen earlier in the year and having already made 175 in an Under-19 World Cup final at the same ground in February. Mayank Yadav took the award in the first match and Ishan Kishan in the second, in which India made 219 for 5.
For India the tour was a look at a second string. For Zimbabwe it was three home matches against the world champions, which is a scheduling reality of the current calendar: they get India in Harare in a short window between India's larger commitments, and they get it against a squad of players trying to establish themselves. The Test ledger between the sides, dormant since 2005, is on the India versus Zimbabwe Test record page, and the sixty-six one-day internationals on the India versus Zimbabwe ODI record page.
Reading the ledger
The 12-3 record understates how close some of these games have been. Two matches in the fixture have been decided by three runs or fewer, both in the 2016 series; one more by ten runs and another by thirteen. Set against that, India have four wins by more than 70 runs and two by ten wickets, so the distribution is bimodal rather than even — India either win handsomely or scrape home.
The reason is squad selection. India send second-choice sides to Harare, and a second-choice Indian side is stronger than Zimbabwe over five matches but not necessarily over one. Both of Zimbabwe's bilateral wins in the past decade came in the opening match of a series, before the visiting side had settled.
Zimbabwe's own position in the format has moved about across the eleven years this record covers. They did not reach the main draw of the 2016 tournament and did not qualify for 2021 or 2024 at all; they did qualify in 2022, and beat Pakistan in it, and in 2026 they reached the Super Eight — which is why the Chennai match happened. India's broader white-ball record and the competitions it sits inside are on the cricket in India hub.
Sources and method
Each of the fifteen scorecards is the source for its own row: dates, venues, totals, overs and margins come from the published record of the match, with the two World Cup fixtures cross-checked against ICC tournament records and the four bilateral series against the tour records published for each.
Players of the match are named only where the award is recorded in the scorecard for that game. Where a squad or a captain is named — Shreyas Iyer and Tilak Varma in 2026, Shubman Gill in 2024, Sikandar Raza for Zimbabwe — it follows the squad announced for that series.
Statements about Zimbabwe never having chased successfully in the fixture, and about which grounds have staged which matches, are counts taken from the fifteen scorecards on this page rather than from a records database. Suryavanshi's 151 runs is the series aggregate published at the end of the July 2026 tour. Nothing on this page is computed from ball-by-ball data. Complete to 27 August 2026.