India ODI most four wicket hauls: All-Time Records

Ajit Agarkar and Mohammed Shami have each taken exactly four wickets in an ODI innings ten times for India, which is the record. Kuldeep Yadav has nine, Anil Kumble eight, and Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan and Ravindra Jadeja seven apiece. Those seven names cover the whole top of the list, and they came from four different generations of Indian bowling.

There is a counting question to settle before the table makes sense. Statsguru's "4" column means precisely four wickets in an innings — a five-wicket haul is recorded in the "5" column and is not also counted as a four. So Agarkar's ten fours and two fives make twelve innings in which he took four or more, while Shami's ten and six make sixteen. Both readings appear below, because the second one changes the order.

Agarkar took 288 wickets in 191 matches and Shami 206 in 108. One bowled in the middle of India's least successful decade of one-day cricket and the other in its most successful. That they arrive at the same number by such different routes is the most interesting thing on the page.

Four-wicket hauls for India in ODIs, two or more

Rank	Bowler	Span	Mat	Inns	Wkts	4w	5w	4+
=1	Ajit Agarkar	1998-2007	191	188	288	10	2	12
=1	Mohammed Shami	2013-2025	108	107	206	10	6	16
3	Kuldeep Yadav	2017-2026	121	118	194	9	2	11
4	Anil Kumble	1990-2007	269	263	334	8	2	10
=5	Javagal Srinath	1991-2003	229	227	315	7	3	10
=5	Zaheer Khan	2000-2012	194	191	269	7	1	8
=5	Ravindra Jadeja	2009-2026	210	202	232	7	2	9
=8	Jasprit Bumrah	2016-2026	91	90	151	6	2	8
=8	Ishant Sharma	2007-2016	80	78	115	6	0	6
=10	Irfan Pathan	2004-2012	120	118	173	5	2	7
=10	Ashish Nehra	2001-2011	117	117	155	5	2	7
=10	Yuzvendra Chahal	2016-2023	72	69	121	5	2	7
=13	Manoj Prabhakar	1984-1996	130	127	157	4	2	6
=13	Sachin Tendulkar	1989-2012	463	270	154	4	2	6
=13	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	2012-2022	121	120	141	4	1	5
=13	Umesh Yadav	2010-2018	75	73	106	4	0	4
=17	Kapil Dev	1978-1994	225	221	253	3	1	4
=17	Venkatesh Prasad	1994-2001	161	160	196	3	1	4
=17	Munaf Patel	2006-2011	70	67	86	3	0	3
=17	Roger Binny	1980-1987	72	67	77	3	0	3
=17	Praveen Kumar	2007-2012	68	67	77	3	0	3
=17	Shardul Thakur	2017-2023	47	46	65	3	0	3
=17	Prasidh Krishna	2021-2026	28	28	50	3	1	4
=17	Narendra Hirwani	1988-1992	18	18	23	3	0	3
=25	Harbhajan Singh	1998-2015	234	225	265	2	3	5
=25	Ravi Shastri	1981-1992	150	136	129	2	1	3
=25	Yuvraj Singh	2000-2017	301	158	110	2	1	3
=25	Mohammed Siraj	2019-2026	50	49	76	2	1	3
=25	S Sreesanth	2005-2011	53	52	75	2	1	3
=25	Madan Lal	1974-1987	67	64	73	2	0	2
=25	RP Singh	2005-2011	58	57	69	2	0	2
=25	Amit Mishra	2003-2016	36	34	64	2	2	4
=25	Venkatapathy Raju	1990-1996	53	52	63	2	0	2

Reading the 4+ column instead

Order the same bowlers by innings of four wickets or more and the list changes at the top. Mohammed Shami goes clear on sixteen, Ajit Agarkar drops to twelve and Kuldeep Yadav to eleven, with Anil Kumble and Srinath level on ten. Further down, Harbhajan Singh climbs from joint 25th to a share of thirteenth because three of his five big returns were fives rather than fours.

The 4+ number is the better measure of how often a bowler ran through a side, and the plain "4" number is the better measure of how often he stopped one short. Shami's ratio — sixteen returns of four or more, six of them fives — is the highest conversion rate of anyone with more than five such innings. Agarkar's is the lowest: twelve times four or more, only twice five.

Agarkar's ten

Agarkar played 191 ODIs between 1998 and 2007, took 288 wickets and conceded 5.07 an over, and India lost 82 of the matches he played in. He was a genuinely fast-striking bowler — a wicket every 32.9 balls, seventh among all India bowlers with 2,000 deliveries — and he was also expensive enough that his selection was argued about for most of a decade.

Ten four-wicket hauls in 188 innings works out at one every nineteen. Six came away from India, four at home, and his best figures of 6 for 42 came at the MCG in January 2004 in the middle of India's most competitive tour of Australia. His full record is at Ajit Agarkar and his conversion into fives is set out on the India ODI most five wicket hauls page.

The spinner who attacks

Kuldeep Yadav's nine is the most by any India spinner and it is a modern phenomenon. Kumble, with 263 innings against Kuldeep's 118, has eight. Harbhajan Singh, with 225 innings, has two. The three men bowled the same overs of an innings for the same country, and the difference is what they were asked to do in them.

Kuldeep is a wrist spinner selected to take wickets between the eleventh and fortieth over, in a side that expects to defend 330 rather than 250 and can therefore afford to let him attack. Six of his nine fours came away from India, against sides who face left-arm wrist spin rarely. The wider lineage runs through the spin bowling tradition page.

Home, away and neutral

Splitting the leaders by venue shows where the big returns actually happen.

Bowler	4w at home	4w away/neutral	5w at home	5w away/neutral
Mohammed Shami	4	6	4	2
Ajit Agarkar	5	5	1	1
Kuldeep Yadav	3	6	0	2
Anil Kumble	2	6	1	1
Javagal Srinath	0	7	2	1
Zaheer Khan	1	6	1	0
Ravindra Jadeja	3	4	1	1
Jasprit Bumrah	2	4	0	2
Ishant Sharma	1	5	0	0
Irfan Pathan	2	3	0	2
Yuzvendra Chahal	1	4	0	2
Manoj Prabhakar	2	2	2	0
Sachin Tendulkar	1	3	2	0
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	0	4	0	1
Harbhajan Singh	1	1	2	1
Kapil Dev	1	2	0	1

Srinath took seven four-wicket hauls away from India and none at home, in 80 home matches. Bhuvneshwar Kumar took four away and none at home in 44. Only Agarkar is evenly split, and only Ravindra Jadeja — three at home, four away — comes close. The pattern is consistent enough to state plainly: India's bowlers have taken most of their four-wicket hauls outside India, on pitches where a ball does something, in front of totals that were defensible. Home ODIs in India, with two new balls and short square boundaries, are where an attack gets picked off for 340 without anyone taking four.

Hirwani's three from eighteen matches

Narendra Hirwani played 18 one-day internationals for India between 1988 and 1992, took 23 wickets, and three of those innings were four-wicket hauls. That is the same number as Kapil Dev managed in 221 innings and the highest ratio of anyone on the page: one four-for every six innings bowled.

He is on this list because leg spin was unfashionable in Indian one-day sides of the period and because his figures were volatile — 23 wickets from 18 matches at 31.26, with three of the good days accounting for twelve of them. There is no player page for him here yet; the player directory covers the ones there are.

Four observations

Sachin Tendulkar has four four-wicket hauls, the same as Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav and one more than Kapil Dev. He bowled 270 innings, more than Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and Chahal have bowled between them, and three of his four came in India.

Nine of the 33 bowlers on this page have never taken five in an innings for India. Ishant Sharma is the most conspicuous: six four-wicket hauls, 115 wickets, no five-for in 78 innings. Umesh Yadav, Munaf Patel, Roger Binny, Praveen Kumar, Shardul Thakur, Narendra Hirwani, Madan Lal, RP Singh and Venkatapathy Raju are the others.

Of the seven bowlers with seven or more fours, four debuted after 2013. India's ODI attack changed composition rather than simply improving: two swing bowlers and two attacking spinners produce more four-and-five-wicket innings than four medium-pacers ever did, and the best bowling figures list shows the same thing from the other direction.

Prasidh Krishna has three fours and one five from 28 matches, a rate that would put him second on the page if he plays a hundred. Whether he does is the sort of thing the cricket in India hub and the history of one-day cricket in India page will end up recording.

Sources and method

Every haul count, wicket total and innings figure is from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru bowling career records for India men's one-day internationals, checked during the final week of August 2026. The home and away breakdowns come from the same records filtered by venue, with away and neutral grounds combined.

The table stops at two four-wicket hauls. Below that the list runs to well over a hundred names and stops being a ranking, and a bowler with one four-for in four matches is not usefully compared with Agarkar. Bowlers who fall outside Statsguru's top hundred by career wickets were checked individually for four-wicket hauls, which is how Narendra Hirwani appears here.

The 4+ column is arithmetic performed on this page: the "4" and "5" columns added together. Statsguru's "5" column includes any innings of five wickets or more, so a six-wicket or seven-wicket return is counted once, in the fives. Nothing else on the page is computed. Judgements about which phase of an innings a bowler operated in, and about why away hauls outnumber home ones, are interpretation rather than data, and the figures for active bowlers will move.