India ODI most wickets: All-Time Records

Anil Kumble took 334 wickets in 263 One-Day International innings for India between 1990 and 2007. Javagal Srinath is second on 315, and no other Indian has reached 300. Ajit Agarkar is third with 288 from 188 innings — 75 fewer innings than Kumble bowled.

Those three head a list on which the underlying methods have almost nothing in common. Kumble bowled 14,376 deliveries at 4.29 an over and took a wicket every 43 balls. Mohammed Shami, eighth on 206, took a wicket every 25.8 balls and conceded 5.58 an over. Both records are the product of a role, not a ranking.

The table ranks by wickets and carries average, economy and strike rate together, because in ODI bowling those three are the whole argument. A bowler cannot be judged on any one of them without the other two.

The 25 leading ODI wicket-takers for India

#	Bowler	Span	Inns	Wkts	Ave	Econ	SR	Best	5w
1	Anil Kumble	1990-2007	263	334	30.83	4.29	43.0	6/12	2
2	Javagal Srinath	1991-2003	227	315	28.08	4.44	37.8	5/23	3
3	Ajit Agarkar	1998-2007	188	288	27.85	5.07	32.9	6/42	2
4	Zaheer Khan	2000-2012	191	269	30.11	4.95	36.4	5/42	1
5	Harbhajan Singh	1998-2015	225	265	33.47	4.30	46.6	5/31	3
6	Kapil Dev	1978-1994	221	253	27.45	3.71	44.2	5/43	1
7	Ravindra Jadeja	2009-2026	202	232	36.54	4.88	44.8	5/33	2
8	Mohammed Shami	2013-2025	107	206	24.05	5.58	25.8	7/57	6
9	Venkatesh Prasad	1994-2001	160	196	32.30	4.67	41.4	5/27	1
10	Kuldeep Yadav	2017-2026	118	194	27.04	5.07	31.9	6/25	2
11	Irfan Pathan	2004-2012	118	173	29.72	5.26	33.8	5/27	2
12	Manoj Prabhakar	1984-1996	127	157	28.87	4.27	40.5	5/33	2
13	Ravichandran Ashwin	2010-2023	114	156	33.20	4.93	40.4	4/25	0
14	Ashish Nehra	2001-2011	117	155	31.60	5.21	36.3	6/23	2
15	Sachin Tendulkar	1989-2012	270	154	44.48	5.10	52.2	5/32	2
16	Jasprit Bumrah	2016-2026	90	151	23.74	4.58	31.0	6/19	2
17	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	2012-2022	120	141	35.11	5.08	41.4	5/42	1
18	Ravi Shastri	1981-1992	136	129	36.04	4.21	51.2	5/15	1
19	Yuzvendra Chahal	2016-2023	69	121	27.13	5.26	30.9	6/42	2
20	Ishant Sharma	2007-2016	78	115	30.98	5.72	32.4	4/34	0
21	Yuvraj Singh	2000-2017	158	110	38.42	5.08	45.3	5/31	1
22	Umesh Yadav	2010-2018	73	106	33.63	6.01	33.5	4/31	0
23	Sourav Ganguly	1992-2007	170	100	38.35	5.06	45.4	5/16	2
24	Virender Sehwag	1999-2013	142	94	39.75	5.22	45.6	4/6	0
25	Hardik Pandya	2016-2025	88	91	35.50	5.60	38.0	4/24	0

Why only two Indians have passed 300

Kumble bowled in 263 ODI innings and Anil Kumble is the only Indian spinner to have been given that many. Javagal Srinath managed 227 in twelve years as India's leading seamer, at a time when a fast bowler was expected to bowl ten overs in almost every match he played.

Nobody since has been available that often. Zaheer Khan bowled 191 innings across a career interrupted repeatedly by injury; Jasprit Bumrah has 90 in ten years, because India's schedule now spreads across three formats and its best fast bowler is rested from ODIs as a matter of policy. The arithmetic is simple enough: Bumrah takes wickets at a better rate than either man above him but would need 175 more innings to reach Kumble's total.

Harbhajan Singh's 265 from 225 innings is the third-largest workload on the list, and his 46.6 strike rate the second slowest — a containing off-spinner bowling out his overs rather than attacking.

Strike rate, with a 50-wicket floor

Bowler	Wkts	Balls per wicket	Econ
Mohammed Shami	206	25.8	5.58
Prasidh Krishna	50	27.0	5.90
Mohammed Siraj	76	29.6	5.13
Amit Mishra	64	29.9	4.72
Yuzvendra Chahal	121	30.9	5.26
Jasprit Bumrah	151	31.0	4.58
Kuldeep Yadav	194	31.9	5.07
Ajit Agarkar	288	32.9	5.07
Umesh Yadav	106	33.5	6.01
Irfan Pathan	173	33.8	5.26
Ashish Nehra	155	36.3	5.21
Zaheer Khan	269	36.4	4.95
Javagal Srinath	315	37.8	4.44
Manoj Prabhakar	157	40.5	4.27
Anil Kumble	334	43.0	4.29
Kapil Dev	253	44.2	3.71
Harbhajan Singh	265	46.6	4.30

Every bowler in the top seven of this table began playing after 2013 except Ajit Agarkar, whose 32.9 was an outlier in his own era by nearly five balls. Shami's 25.8 is the fastest of any Indian past fifty ODI wickets, and it comes with the second-worst economy in the group — the two facts describe the same bowler, one who attacked the stumps with the new ball and was expensive when it did not work.

Fifty wickets is the floor because below it the numbers stop meaning much. Two or three good spells inside a dozen matches can produce a strike rate in the low twenties that no career would sustain.

Economy rates belong to their decade

Kapil Dev conceded 3.71 an over across 11,202 deliveries. Nobody on this list is within half a run of him, and only Ravi Shastri (4.21), Manoj Prabhakar (4.27), Kumble (4.29) and Harbhajan (4.30) are under 4.40. All five bowled the bulk of their overs before 2005.

Of the ten bowlers on the list who began after 2010, the best economy is Bumrah's 4.58 and the worst Umesh Yadav's 6.01. Comparing a Kapil figure with a Shami figure tells you about field restrictions, two new balls and the size of ODI totals, not about the two bowlers. The change to the format is set out in the guide to India's ODI cricket history.

Wickets at home and away

Bowler	Home wkts	Home ave	Away/neutral wkts	Away/neutral ave
Anil Kumble	126	28.93	208	31.99
Javagal Srinath	103	30.51	212	26.91
Ajit Agarkar	109	27.38	179	28.13
Zaheer Khan	94	30.21	175	30.07
Harbhajan Singh	110	35.48	155	32.06
Kapil Dev	100	27.15	153	27.65
Ravindra Jadeja	118	31.79	114	41.46
Mohammed Shami	87	24.89	119	23.44
Kuldeep Yadav	90	30.47	104	24.08
Jasprit Bumrah	64	26.70	87	21.56

The expected pattern — Indian bowlers better at home — barely appears. Srinath, Harbhajan, Shami, Kuldeep Yadav and Bumrah all averaged less away from India than in it, and in Kuldeep's case by more than six runs a wicket.

The exception is Ravindra Jadeja, whose 118 home wickets cost 31.79 and 114 away wickets 41.46. Left-arm finger spin on a slow Indian surface is a different proposition from the same bowler in Manchester or Perth, and his record is the clearest venue effect on the page. Kumble's is the second, three runs a wicket in the same direction.

The spin and seam split

Nine of the 25 were front-line spinners: Kumble, Harbhajan, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep, Ravichandran Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Shastri as a slow left-armer, and the part-time off-spin of Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag. Between them they hold 1,679 of the wickets in the table.

The seamers hold rather more, and the balance has shifted over time. India's ODI attack in the 1990s took the field with Kumble and Srinath and a variable third option; the side that won at home through the 2020s went in with Bumrah, Shami and Mohammed Siraj plus Kuldeep. The country's two bowling traditions are traced separately in the guides to India's spin bowling tradition and the evolution of Indian fast bowling.

Four observations

Mohammed Shami has six ODI five-wicket hauls, more than any other bowler on this list, and he took them in 107 innings. Kumble and Srinath together have five from 490.

Tendulkar is fifteenth on the list with 154 wickets, which is the highest total by any Indian who was not selected as a bowler. His average of 44.48 is the worst in the table by 4.73, and he still took two five-wicket hauls.

Four of the 25 never took a five-wicket haul: Ashwin in 114 innings, Ishant Sharma in 78, Umesh Yadav in 73 and Hardik Pandya in 88. Ashwin's 156 wickets without one is the largest total on this list without a five-for.

Only three bowlers on the list are still active, and two of them — Bumrah and Kuldeep — sit on the best strike rates of anyone past 150 wickets. The wickets-per-innings view of the same careers is on the page for India's best ODI bowling averages, and the single-innings view on India's best ODI bowling figures. Individual records are in the player directory and the wider country picture in the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Wickets, innings bowled, averages, economy rates, strike rates, best innings figures and five-wicket-haul counts are from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru career query for men's One-Day Internationals with the team filter set to India, ordered by wickets. The list stops at 91 wickets, which is where the twenty-fifth name falls.

Home figures are the same query with the venue filter set to home. Away and neutral wickets are the career total minus the home total; the away average is the away runs conceded divided by the away wickets, both derived by the same subtraction. These are computed columns, not quoted ones, and small rounding differences against a directly filtered query are possible.

The strike-rate table applies a floor of fifty career wickets and therefore includes four bowlers who are not in the main list — Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj and Amit Mishra sit below 91 wickets but above the floor. Economy is reported as Statsguru gives it, in runs per over.

The spin and seam counts describe how each bowler was primarily used, which is a judgement rather than a data field; Shastri, Tendulkar and Sehwag are the debatable cases and all three are named so the reader can disagree. Every figure was read from Statsguru during the final week of August 2026.