India T20I best bowling figures: All-Time Records

Deepak Chahar bowled 3.2 overs against Bangladesh at the VCA Stadium on 10 November 2019 and took 6 for 7. Not one of his twenty deliveries went for a boundary, the last three wickets came as a hat-trick — the first by an India bowler in a T20 international — and Bangladesh were bowled out for 144 chasing 175. They were the best figures recorded in a men's T20I at the time.

Second on the list is a very different spell. Yuzvendra Chahal took 6 for 25 in a full four overs against England at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in February 2017, conceding at 6.25 an over on a small ground in a match where England were chasing 203. Below those two come nine spells of five wickets, and then the four-wicket hauls begin.

Only nine India bowlers have taken five in a T20 international innings, across two decades of the format. That scarcity, rather than the identity of the leader, is the shape of this page.

India's best T20I bowling figures

#	Bowler	Figures	Overs	Mdns	Econ	Opponent	Venue	Date
1	Deepak Chahar	6/7	3.2	0	2.10	Bangladesh	Nagpur	10 Nov 2019
2	Yuzvendra Chahal	6/25	4.0	0	6.25	England	Bengaluru	1 Feb 2017
3	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	5/4	4.0	1	1.00	Afghanistan	Dubai	8 Sep 2022
4	Kuldeep Yadav	5/17	2.5	0	6.00	South Africa	Johannesburg	14 Dec 2023
5	Varun Chakaravarthy	5/17	4.0	0	4.25	South Africa	Gqeberha	10 Nov 2024
6	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	5/24	4.0	0	6.00	South Africa	Johannesburg	18 Feb 2018
7	Kuldeep Yadav	5/24	4.0	0	6.00	England	Manchester	3 Jul 2018
8	Varun Chakaravarthy	5/24	4.0	0	6.00	England	Rajkot	28 Jan 2025
9	Arshdeep Singh	5/51	4.0	0	12.75	New Zealand	Thiruvananthapuram	31 Jan 2026
10	Kuldeep Yadav	4/7	2.1	0	3.23	UAE	Dubai	10 Sep 2025
11	Ravichandran Ashwin	4/8	4.0	1	2.00	Sri Lanka	Visakhapatnam	14 Feb 2016
12	Arshdeep Singh	4/9	4.0	0	2.25	USA	New York	12 Jun 2024
13	Barinder Sran	4/10	4.0	0	2.50	Zimbabwe	Harare	20 Jun 2016
14	Deepak Hooda	4/10	2.5	0	3.52	New Zealand	Mount Maunganui	20 Nov 2022
15	Ravichandran Ashwin	4/11	3.2	0	3.30	Australia	Mirpur	30 Mar 2014
16	Harbhajan Singh	4/12	4.0	2	3.00	England	Colombo (RPS)	23 Sep 2012
17	RP Singh	4/13	4.0	0	3.25	South Africa	Durban	20 Sep 2007
18	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	4/13	4.0	0	3.25	South Africa	Cuttack	12 Jun 2022
19	Ravi Bishnoi	4/13	4.0	2	3.25	Zimbabwe	Harare	6 Jul 2024
20	Jasprit Bumrah	4/15	4.0	0	3.75	New Zealand	Ahmedabad	8 Mar 2026
21	Ravi Bishnoi	4/16	2.4	0	6.00	West Indies	Lauderhill	7 Aug 2022
22	Hardik Pandya	4/16	4.0	0	4.00	New Zealand	Ahmedabad	1 Feb 2023
23	Mohammed Siraj	4/17	4.0	0	4.25	New Zealand	Napier	22 Nov 2022
24	Avesh Khan	4/18	4.0	0	4.50	South Africa	Rajkot	17 Jun 2022
25	Zaheer Khan	4/19	3.0	0	6.33	Ireland	Nottingham	10 Jun 2009

Further four-wicket hauls exist below this cut — Mukesh Kumar, Shardul Thakur, Harshal Patel and Ashok Dinda among them — and are ordered by runs conceded, so the list continues rather than ending here.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar's four runs in four overs

The third entry is the most extraordinary economy figure on the page and possibly in India's record: 4-1-4-5 against Afghanistan at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium in the 2022 Asia Cup. One maiden, four runs conceded from 24 deliveries, five wickets.

No other five-wicket haul by an Indian has cost fewer than 17. Bhuvneshwar Kumar is the only bowler with two five-fors and a four-for in this top twenty-five, and his other five-wicket haul, 5 for 24 at the Wanderers in February 2018, came at exactly the same economy rate as three other spells on the list.

Nine five-wicket hauls, and who has them

Bowler	Five-wicket hauls	Best
Kuldeep Yadav	2	5/17
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	2	5/4
Varun Chakaravarthy	2	5/17
Yuzvendra Chahal	1	6/25
Deepak Chahar	1	6/7
Arshdeep Singh	1	5/51

Six bowlers, nine spells. Five of the nine were taken by wrist or mystery spinners — Kuldeep Yadav's two, Varun Chakaravarthy's two and Yuzvendra Chahal's 6 for 25 — and four by seamers. The full career counts are on the page for India's most T20I five-wicket hauls.

Arshdeep Singh's 5 for 51 at Thiruvananthapuram in January 2026 is the outlier of the nine. It cost 12.75 an over in a match where India made 271 and New Zealand chased hard, and it is the only five-wicket haul in India's T20I record that conceded more than 25.

The four-over ceiling

Seventeen of the twenty-five spells here are full four-over allocations and seven are shorter, which is a higher proportion of shortened spells than a Test or ODI list would show. In a twenty-over innings a bowler who takes wickets quickly often finds the innings ends before his overs do: Chahar's 6 for 7 came in 3.2, Kuldeep's 5 for 17 at the Wanderers in 2.5, and his 4 for 7 against the UAE in 2.1.

That has a bearing on how these figures should be read. A bowler is limited to 24 deliveries in this format, so the ceiling on a T20I spell is structural rather than a matter of stamina, and the difference between 5 for 17 and 6 for 7 can be whether a captain had an over left to give.

Where and against whom

Of the nine five-wicket hauls, four were taken in India, four away and one at a neutral venue. South Africa have conceded three, England three, and Bangladesh, Afghanistan and New Zealand one each.

Across the full twenty-five, South Africa appear six times and New Zealand five, which between them is more than two in five of the whole list. Ahmedabad, Harare, Johannesburg, Dubai and Rajkot each host two entries. Jasprit Bumrah's 4 for 15 against New Zealand at the Narendra Modi Stadium on 8 March 2026 is the most recent addition.

Four observations

The first is that only two Indians have taken six wickets in a T20I innings, and their spells are separated by 18 runs and two and a half years. Chahar's economy of 2.10 and Chahal's 6.25 describe entirely different pieces of bowling that produced almost the same figures.

The second is that Ravichandran Ashwin appears twice in the top fifteen with 4 for 8 and 4 for 11 and never took five in the format. His 4 for 8 at Visakhapatnam cost 2.00 an over, the second-cheapest full four-over spell in the table.

The third is that maidens are almost absent. Only four of the twenty-five spells contain one, and only Ravi Bishnoi at Harare and Harbhajan Singh at Colombo bowled two. The whole subject is covered on the page for India's most T20I maiden overs.

The fourth is that eight of the twenty-five spells were bowled since the start of 2024, which is faster than the format's overall growth. Modern T20 batting produces more wickets as well as more runs, and the economy figures on the page for India's best T20I economy rates show the other half of that trade. The format's history for India 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

Figures, overs, maidens, runs conceded, economy rates, opponents, venues and dates come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru innings query for India in men's T20 internationals ordered by wickets taken, with the team filter set to India. The list is truncated at twenty-five rows; four-wicket hauls conceding more than 19 runs continue below that cut and are not shown, which is stated so the table is not read as exhaustive for four-fors.

The five-wicket haul summary is compiled from the same query by counting spells of five or more, and cross-checked against the career query ordered by five-wicket hauls; both return six bowlers and nine spells. Details of Chahar's spell at Nagpur — the hat-trick, the absence of a boundary in his twenty deliveries, and the match scores — come from match reporting for that game, as does the note that his figures were the best in a men's T20I when they were taken. Figures were read in August 2026 and cover men's T20Is completed to that date.