India T20I best bowling average: All-Time Records

Kuldeep Yadav has taken 95 T20I wickets for India at 13.74 apiece. That is 3.62 better than the next qualified bowler and more than four runs per wicket clear of Jasprit Bumrah, who has taken 26 more wickets. Among Indians with thirty or more wickets in the format, nobody else is under 17.

Thirty wickets is the threshold used here, and it does most of the work on the page. Drop it to ten and three bowlers with a season's worth of T20I cricket between them — Lakshmipathy Balaji at 12.10, Pragyan Ojha at 13.20 and Ashok Dinda at 14.41 — appear above Kuldeep. None of those careers ran past ten matches, and a bowling average built on nine or ten wickets is not a record of anything.

Sixteen India bowlers clear thirty wickets. All sixteen are listed below, so this is a complete field rather than a top ten.

India's best T20I bowling averages (minimum 30 wickets)

#	Bowler	Span	Inns	Overs	Runs	Wkts	BBI	Ave	Econ	SR	4w	5w
1	Kuldeep Yadav	2017-2026	52	187.5	1,306	95	5/17	13.74	6.95	11.8	3	2
2	Varun Chakaravarthy	2021-2026	45	167.3	1,285	74	5/17	17.36	7.67	13.5	1	2
3	Jasprit Bumrah	2016-2026	92	335.4	2,188	121	4/15	18.08	6.51	16.6	1	0
4	Arshdeep Singh	2022-2026	89	317.1	2,715	135	5/51	20.11	8.56	14.0	2	1
5	Ravi Bishnoi	2022-2026	48	184.4	1,377	67	4/13	20.55	7.45	16.5	2	0
6	Ashish Nehra	2009-2017	27	98.0	758	34	3/19	22.29	7.73	17.2	0	0
7	Axar Patel	2015-2026	94	302.4	2,295	101	3/9	22.72	7.58	17.9	0	0
8	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	2012-2022	86	298.3	2,079	90	5/4	23.10	6.96	19.9	3	2
9	Ravichandran Ashwin	2010-2022	65	242.0	1,672	72	4/8	23.22	6.90	20.1	2	0
10	Shardul Thakur	2018-2022	24	84.2	772	33	4/27	23.39	9.15	15.3	1	0
11	Deepak Chahar	2018-2023	25	90.0	747	31	6/7	24.09	8.30	17.4	0	1
12	Washington Sundar	2017-2026	58	175.5	1,252	51	3/3	24.54	7.12	20.6	0	0
13	Yuzvendra Chahal	2016-2023	79	294.0	2,409	96	6/25	25.09	8.19	18.3	2	1
14	Shivam Dube	2019-2026	49	102.0	989	38	3/4	26.02	9.69	16.1	0	0
15	Hardik Pandya	2016-2026	125	370.5	3,093	114	4/16	27.13	8.34	19.5	3	0
16	Ravindra Jadeja	2009-2024	71	226.0	1,612	54	3/15	29.85	7.13	25.1	0	0

Kuldeep Yadav's 13.74

Kuldeep Yadav's figure is built on a strike rate of 11.8 — a wicket every two overs — rather than on parsimony. His economy of 6.95 is only fifth-best in the group, behind Bumrah, Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Washington Sundar. He concedes at an ordinary rate and takes wickets at twice the frequency of most of the field, and an average is runs divided by wickets, so the denominator does the work.

Fifty-two innings of bowling is a substantial sample by the standards of a wrist-spinner used selectively, though it is barely half Jasprit Bumrah's 92 and Hardik Pandya's 125. Kuldeep has not been an every-match selection, and the counterargument to his position at the top of this page is that a bowler picked for the conditions that suit him should average less than one picked for every surface.

Home and away

Bowler	Home ave	Away/neutral ave
Kuldeep Yadav	19.11	11.61
Varun Chakaravarthy	15.57	20.13
Jasprit Bumrah	21.35	15.93
Arshdeep Singh	22.76	18.55
Ravi Bishnoi	23.57	18.63
Axar Patel	19.70	26.32
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	26.02	21.32
Ravichandran Ashwin	23.45	23.12
Yuzvendra Chahal	22.75	27.53
Hardik Pandya	31.75	24.11

Seven of the ten average less away from India than at home, which inverts the pattern the same exercise produces for Test cricket. Kuldeep's away figure of 11.61 from 68 wickets is the lowest number in this article, and Bumrah's 15.93 from 73 away wickets is not far behind.

The three exceptions are all finger or mystery spinners: Axar Patel at 19.70 against 26.32, Yuzvendra Chahal at 22.75 against 27.53, and Varun Chakaravarthy at 15.57 against 20.13. Indian surfaces reward them and reward the seamers less; the split is the clearest structural finding on the page.

Average and economy do not agree

Ranked by economy the order changes almost completely. Bumrah's 6.51 is the best in the group and Ashwin's 6.90 second, while Arshdeep Singh, fourth on average, concedes 8.56 an over — the worst figure of the sixteen.

That is not a contradiction. Arshdeep bowls the powerplay and the death, where runs are unavoidable and wickets are available; Ashwin bowled through the middle overs, where the reverse is true. A bowling average in twenty-over cricket measures how expensive a wicket is, not how expensive a bowler is, and the two questions have different answers. The second is set out on the page for India's best T20I economy rates.

Ravindra Jadeja is the clearest case. He concedes 7.13 an over, fourth-best in the group, and averages 29.85, worst in the group, because his strike rate of 25.1 is the slowest here by more than four balls.

Who misses the cut

Ashish Nehra scrapes in at 34 wickets and averages 22.29, the best figure of any Indian seamer who finished before 2020. Below thirty wickets sit several bowlers with tempting numbers: Yuvraj Singh at 17.82 from 28 wickets, Amit Mishra at 15.00 from 16, RP Singh at 15.00 from 15 and Dinda at 14.41 from 17.

None of those samples is large enough to distinguish a good bowler from a bowler who had four good matches, which is why the threshold is set where it is and stated on the page. Ashish Nehra's 34 is the smallest qualified sample and should be read with more caution than Bumrah's 121.

Four observations

The first is that the two best averages belong to wrist-spinners who played their first T20I in 2017 and 2021. India's use of spin through the middle overs changed in that period, and the two beneficiaries sit first and second here.

The second is that Ravi Bishnoi at 20.55 and Arshdeep at 20.11 are separated by 0.44 with wildly different economy rates of 7.45 and 8.56. Two bowlers can arrive at the same average by opposite routes.

The third is that Bhuvneshwar Kumar has five four-wicket-or-better hauls, the most of anyone in the group alongside Kuldeep, and sits eighth on average. Big spells and low averages are only loosely connected.

The fourth is that the strike-rate ordering is different again, and Kuldeep leads it too — the detail is on the page for India's best T20I bowling strike rates. The wider account of the format is in the guide to India's T20 international history, the country's game in the cricket in India hub, and each bowler in the player directory.

Sources and method

Wickets, runs conceded, overs, averages, economy rates, strike rates, best innings figures and four- and five-wicket hauls come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru career query for India in men's T20 internationals ordered by bowling average, with a minimum of thirty career wickets applied in the query and the team filter set to India. Every row returned is reproduced, so the sixteen names are the whole qualified field.

The home and away table is the same query run with the venue filter set to home and then to away and neutral combined; rows are shown only where both halves are returned directly. The figures quoted for bowlers below the threshold come from the unqualified version of the same query and are given precisely to show why the threshold exists. Figures were read in August 2026 and cover men's T20Is completed to that date; spans ending in 2026 belong to bowlers whose averages may still move.