India ODI best bowling figures: All-Time Records

Mohammed Shami bowled 9.5 overs for 57 runs and seven wickets against New Zealand at the Wankhede Stadium on 15 November 2023. It is the only seven-wicket return by an India bowler in a one-day international, and it came in a World Cup semi-final that India won by 70 runs.

Before that night the record had belonged to Stuart Binny, whose 4.4-2-4-6 against Bangladesh at Mirpur on 17 June 2014 remains the cheapest six-wicket haul India has produced and one of the cheapest in the history of the format. India had been bowled out for 105 in that match and won it anyway.

The distinction matters for how this page is ordered. A best-figures list ranks wickets first and runs second, so Shami's seven for 57 sits above Binny's six for 4 even though Binny conceded 53 fewer runs. Read the same rows by economy and the order inverts almost completely.

India's best ODI innings analyses

#	Bowler	Figures	Overs	Econ	Opponent	Venue	Date
1	Mohammed Shami	7/57	9.5	5.79	New Zealand	Wankhede, Mumbai	15 Nov 2023
2	Stuart Binny	6/4	4.4	0.85	Bangladesh	Mirpur	17 Jun 2014
3	Anil Kumble	6/12	6.1	1.94	West Indies	Eden Gardens, Kolkata	27 Nov 1993
4	Jasprit Bumrah	6/19	7.2	2.59	England	The Oval, London	12 Jul 2022
5	Mohammed Siraj	6/21	7.0	3.00	Sri Lanka	R Premadasa, Colombo	17 Sep 2023
6	Ashish Nehra	6/23	10.0	2.30	England	Kingsmead, Durban	26 Feb 2003
7	Kuldeep Yadav	6/25	10.0	2.50	England	Trent Bridge, Nottingham	12 Jul 2018
8	Ajit Agarkar	6/42	10.0	4.20	Australia	MCG, Melbourne	9 Jan 2004
9	Yuzvendra Chahal	6/42	10.0	4.20	Australia	MCG, Melbourne	18 Jan 2019

Nine analyses of six wickets or more, from more than a thousand one-day internationals. That is the whole set at this level, and it is the reason this table stops at nine rather than running to twenty-five: the tenth-best figure is a five-for, and India have 57 of those, which is the subject of the separate page on India's most ODI five-wicket hauls.

Read the same nine by what they cost

Bowler	Figures	Runs per over	Balls per wicket
Stuart Binny	6/4	0.85	4.7
Anil Kumble	6/12	1.94	6.2
Ashish Nehra	6/23	2.30	10.0
Kuldeep Yadav	6/25	2.50	10.0
Jasprit Bumrah	6/19	2.59	7.3
Mohammed Siraj	6/21	3.00	7.0
Ajit Agarkar	6/42	4.20	10.0
Yuzvendra Chahal	6/42	4.20	10.0
Mohammed Shami	7/57	5.79	8.4

Shami's spell, first on the primary list, is last here. He conceded 5.79 an over in an innings where New Zealand made 327, which is a reminder that a seven-for on a flat Wankhede pitch and a six-for on a crumbling Mirpur surface are not the same piece of bowling wearing different numbers.

Stuart Binny sits at 0.85 an over, and no other analysis on the page is under 1.9. He bowled medium pace at a Bangladesh side that had collapsed already, and he took six of the last seven wickets while conceding four singles. It is the least likely entry on this list and remains, in career terms, the only reason his name appears in India's one-day record book at all: he finished with twenty ODI wickets.

The four that came in a knockout

Kumble at Eden Gardens, Siraj at the Premadasa and Shami at the Wankhede were all bowling in a final or a semi-final. Bumrah at The Oval was not, but the other three were the decisive spells of tournaments India won or, in Shami's case, of a match that carried India to a World Cup final.

Anil Kumble's six for 12 came in the 1993 Hero Cup final, defending 225 against a West Indies side that reached 33 for 2 and then lost their last eight wickets for 90. He bowled leg-spin into rough at the end of a day-night match at a ground that had never before staged one, and India won by 102 runs.

Mohammed Siraj's six for 21 in the 2023 Asia Cup final is the most compressed of the nine. He took four wickets in the fourth over of the innings, the only India bowler to have done that, and his first five came inside sixteen deliveries. Sri Lanka were bowled out for 50 and India won by ten wickets with 263 balls unused.

Where these spells were bowled

Venue country	Analyses	Bowlers
India	2	Shami, Kumble
Australia	2	Agarkar, Chahal
England	2	Bumrah, Kuldeep
Bangladesh	1	Binny
Sri Lanka	1	Siraj
South Africa	1	Nehra

Only two of the nine were bowled in India, which runs against the assumption that India's best bowling numbers come from home pitches. Both of the Australian entries were produced at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, fifteen years apart, by a seam bowler and then by a leg-spinner — Yuzvendra Chahal was the first spinner of any nationality to take six in an ODI innings in Australia.

The two English entries fell on the same calendar date four years apart. Kuldeep Yadav took his six for 25 at Trent Bridge on 12 July 2018 without conceding a boundary in ten overs; Jasprit Bumrah took six for 19 at The Oval on 12 July 2022, bowling England out for 110 in an innings India chased in 18.4 overs without losing a wicket.

Four things the table shows

Six of the nine came after 2014, and five of those six were taken by fast bowlers. India's one-day bowling for most of its history was organised around spin and containment — Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Ravi Shastri — and the record book at the top end no longer reflects that. The change is traced in more detail in the guide to India's fast bowling evolution.

Two bowlers on the list, Binny and Siraj, produced their spell within a career total under 100 ODI wickets. Best-figures tables reward one afternoon, not a career, which is why they are read alongside the aggregate ranking of India's leading ODI wicket-takers.

Ashish Nehra's six for 23 was the only six-wicket haul by an India bowler at a World Cup for twenty years, from Durban in 2003 until Shami's at the Wankhede. Nehra bowled ten straight overs on a swollen ankle in that match and England were 168 all out chasing 251.

Four of the nine came against England, more than against any other opponent, and three of those four were bowled in England. Two came against Australia, both at the MCG. There is no entry against Pakistan, South Africa at home, or the West Indies since 1993, which is a distribution shaped by fixture lists as much as by bowling.

Career records for every bowler here are in the player directory, and the wider story of India's one-day cricket sits in the ODI history guide and the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

The nine analyses were checked one by one against ESPNcricinfo's best-figures-in-an-innings record for India in men's ODIs, and each was confirmed against the scorecard or match report for that fixture. Where a wire report and a records page disagreed on a venue or a date, the scorecard was treated as correct.

Ordering follows the standard convention for a bowling-figures list: wickets descending, then runs conceded ascending. Agarkar and Chahal both returned 6 for 42 in ten overs at the same ground, so the tie is broken by date, with the earlier spell placed first. No other convention would separate them.

The economy and balls-per-wicket columns in the second table are computed here from the overs, runs and wickets in the first, and are not quoted from any published table. Shami's 9.5 overs are treated as 59 deliveries and Binny's 4.4 as 28, following the standard reading of cricket over notation.

The cut-off at six wickets is a property of the data rather than a choice: no India bowler has taken more than six in an ODI innings apart from Shami, so extending the table further would mean starting on the 57 five-wicket hauls, which is a different list. Figures were verified during the last week of August 2026 and cover ODIs completed by that point.