India T20I most ducks: All-Time Records

Rohit Sharma was dismissed without scoring twelve times in 151 T20I innings for India. That is the most by any Indian in the format, and it belongs on the same page as 4,231 runs, five hundreds and 383 fours, because the two facts have the same cause: he opened the batting more often than anyone else and faced the new ball 151 times.

A list of ducks is a list of exposure before it is a list of failure. Nine of the twenty entries below opened or batted at three; five are bowlers who have batted fewer than thirty-five times. Nobody on the page got there by being a poor player, and one of them averages 48.69.

The table gives the raw count first, because that is the record the question asks for, and then a rate column with a qualification, because a count without innings beside it says almost nothing.

The twenty most ducks by India batters in T20Is

#	Player	Span	Inns	Runs	Ave	SR	Ducks
1	Rohit Sharma	2007-2024	151	4,231	32.05	140.89	12
2	Sanju Samson	2015-2026	58	1,432	27.01	155.99	8
3	Abhishek Sharma	2024-2026	55	1,629	30.73	187.24	7
4	Virat Kohli	2010-2024	117	4,188	48.69	137.04	7
5	Suryakumar Yadav	2021-2026	107	3,272	36.35	162.94	7
6	Arshdeep Singh	2022-2026	33	103	6.05	99.03	5
7	KL Rahul	2016-2022	68	2,265	37.75	139.12	5
8	Jasprit Bumrah	2016-2026	12	12	2.00	66.66	4
9	Shreyas Iyer	2017-2026	57	1,415	32.15	138.04	4
10	Hardik Pandya	2016-2026	109	2,288	28.24	145.91	4
11	Rishabh Pant	2017-2024	66	1,209	23.25	127.26	4
12	Axar Patel	2015-2026	64	750	16.66	130.43	4
13	Tilak Varma	2023-2026	56	1,645	44.45	145.18	4
14	Varun Chakaravarthy	2021-2026	11	8	1.60	36.36	4
15	Washington Sundar	2017-2026	27	279	15.50	126.81	4
16	Ishan Kishan	2021-2026	55	1,608	29.77	146.31	3
17	Ravindra Jadeja	2009-2024	41	515	21.45	127.16	3
18	Kuldeep Yadav	2017-2026	10	48	8.00	67.60	3
19	Ashish Nehra	2009-2017	5	28	5.60	71.79	3
20	Yusuf Pathan	2007-2012	18	236	18.15	146.58	3

Ashish Nehra's three ducks came from five innings, which is the highest proportion anywhere in India's T20I record and a straightforward consequence of batting eleventh.

Duck rate, with a thirty-innings qualification

Rates on five-innings samples are noise, so the table below is restricted to batters with at least thirty T20I innings for India.

Player	Ducks	Inns	Duck rate
Arshdeep Singh	5	33	15.2%
Sanju Samson	8	58	13.8%
Abhishek Sharma	7	55	12.7%
Rohit Sharma	12	151	7.9%
KL Rahul	5	68	7.4%
Ravindra Jadeja	3	41	7.3%
Tilak Varma	4	56	7.1%
Shreyas Iyer	4	57	7.0%
Suryakumar Yadav	7	107	6.5%
Axar Patel	4	64	6.3%
Rishabh Pant	4	66	6.1%
Virat Kohli	7	117	6.0%
Ishan Kishan	3	55	5.5%
Hardik Pandya	4	109	3.7%

Arshdeep Singh tops the rate table with five noughts in 33 innings, and he is a fast bowler who has batted at ten or eleven throughout. Of the specialist batters, Sanju Samson at 13.8% and Abhishek Sharma at 12.7% are well clear of the rest — roughly one innings in eight for each.

Hardik Pandya's 3.7% is the lowest in the qualified group by a wide margin, and it is a positional effect rather than a technical one. A batter who arrives in the fifteenth over has a set field, a known target, and a bowler at the end of his spell; the risk of being bowled first ball by a new-ball seamer does not apply to him.

Home and away

Player	Home ducks	Away/neutral ducks
Rohit Sharma	5	7
Sanju Samson	2	6
Suryakumar Yadav	5	2
Abhishek Sharma	4	3
Virat Kohli	3	4
Arshdeep Singh	3	2
KL Rahul	2	3
Varun Chakaravarthy	3	1
Jasprit Bumrah	2	2
Axar Patel	2	2

Samson's split is the most lopsided: six of his eight ducks came away from India, in 34 away innings against 24 at home. Suryakumar Yadav leans the other way, with five of his seven at home in a career split almost evenly between the two.

These are small numbers and should be read as such. A difference of three ducks across a fifty-innings career is one bad tour, not a property of a batter. The one entry with enough volume to carry an inference is Rohit's five and seven, which tracks the ratio of his home to away innings closely and therefore suggests no venue effect at all.

Does hitting hard cause noughts?

The obvious hypothesis is that aggressive batters get out for nought more often, and the table only partly supports it. Abhishek Sharma strikes at 187.24 with a duck rate of 12.7%, and Samson at 155.99 with 13.8%, which fits. But Ishan Kishan strikes at 146.31 with 5.5%, Pandya at 145.91 with 3.7%, and Virat Kohli at 137.04 with 6.0%.

Kishan and Abhishek both open, both strike above 145, and their duck rates differ by a factor of more than two. Position in the order and volume of new-ball exposure explain more of the variation than strike rate does. The rate side of the argument is set out on the page for India's best T20I batting strike rates.

Five observations

The first is that the top five on the raw count include the three highest T20I run-scorers in India's history — Rohit Sharma, Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav. A long career at the top of the order produces both the runs and the noughts.

The second is that five of the twenty are specialist bowlers: Arshdeep, Jasprit Bumrah, Varun Chakaravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav and Nehra. Between them they have 19 ducks from 71 innings, a rate of 26.8%.

The third is that Kohli's seven ducks from 117 innings sits alongside an average of 48.69 and 38 fifties. The list of most T20I fifties for India has him first as well, which is the cleanest illustration that these two records measure the same exposure from opposite ends.

The fourth is that Bumrah has four ducks from twelve innings and twelve career runs. He has been dismissed for nought a third of the times he has batted, which is a record of a bowler who almost never needs to bat.

The fifth is that three of the highest rates belong to active players — Samson, Abhishek Sharma and Arshdeep — so this page will change. The broader account of the format for India is in the guide to India's T20 international history, the country's cricket in the cricket in India hub, and full career records in the player directory.

Sources and method

Duck counts, innings, runs, averages and strike rates come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru career query for India in men's T20 internationals ordered by ducks, with the team filter set to India. 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 duck-rate column is computed here as ducks divided by innings and is not a published statistic. The thirty-innings qualification is stated on the page because the unqualified rate table is dominated by bowlers with single-figure innings counts, which tells you about selection rather than about batting. These counts were taken in August 2026 and include every men's T20I completed by then. Spans ending in 2026 belong to players whose counts may still rise, and the small absolute numbers throughout mean the ordering below fifth place can be changed by a single innings.