India T20I most five wicket hauls: All-Time Records
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India7 min read
Six India bowlers have taken five wickets in a T20 international innings, and between them they have done it nine times in twenty years of the format. Three have two each — Kuldeep Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Varun Chakaravarthy — and no Indian has three.
That is the whole record. It compares with 37 five-wicket hauls by Ravichandran Ashwin alone in Test cricket, and the reason is structural: a T20I bowler is allowed 24 deliveries, so taking five wickets means dismissing a quarter of an opposition side in four overs while nine other wickets are available to his colleagues.
The table below ranks by five-wicket hauls, with the four-wicket column beside it. In the source those columns are read as spells of exactly four and spells of five or more, which is why Deepak Chahar's 6 for 7 registers as a five-wicket haul and not as a four-wicket one.
India bowlers with a T20I five-wicket haul
| # | Bowler | Span | Inns | Overs | Wkts | Best | Ave | Econ | 4w | 5w |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kuldeep Yadav | 2017-2026 | 52 | 187.5 | 95 | 5/17 | 13.74 | 6.95 | 3 | 2 |
| 2 | Bhuvneshwar Kumar | 2012-2022 | 86 | 298.3 | 90 | 5/4 | 23.10 | 6.96 | 3 | 2 |
| 3 | Varun Chakaravarthy | 2021-2026 | 45 | 167.3 | 74 | 5/17 | 17.36 | 7.67 | 1 | 2 |
| 4 | Arshdeep Singh | 2022-2026 | 89 | 317.1 | 135 | 5/51 | 20.11 | 8.56 | 2 | 1 |
| 5 | Yuzvendra Chahal | 2016-2023 | 79 | 294.0 | 96 | 6/25 | 25.09 | 8.19 | 2 | 1 |
| 6 | Deepak Chahar | 2018-2023 | 25 | 90.0 | 31 | 6/7 | 24.09 | 8.30 | 0 | 1 |
The nine spells
| Bowler | Figures | Overs | Econ | Opponent | Venue | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yuzvendra Chahal | 6/25 | 4.0 | 6.25 | England | Bengaluru | 1 Feb 2017 |
| Bhuvneshwar Kumar | 5/24 | 4.0 | 6.00 | South Africa | Johannesburg | 18 Feb 2018 |
| Kuldeep Yadav | 5/24 | 4.0 | 6.00 | England | Manchester | 3 Jul 2018 |
| Deepak Chahar | 6/7 | 3.2 | 2.10 | Bangladesh | Nagpur | 10 Nov 2019 |
| Bhuvneshwar Kumar | 5/4 | 4.0 | 1.00 | Afghanistan | Dubai | 8 Sep 2022 |
| Kuldeep Yadav | 5/17 | 2.5 | 6.00 | South Africa | Johannesburg | 14 Dec 2023 |
| Varun Chakaravarthy | 5/17 | 4.0 | 4.25 | South Africa | Gqeberha | 10 Nov 2024 |
| Varun Chakaravarthy | 5/24 | 4.0 | 6.00 | England | Rajkot | 28 Jan 2025 |
| Arshdeep Singh | 5/51 | 4.0 | 12.75 | New Zealand | Thiruvananthapuram | 31 Jan 2026 |
The nine are spread almost evenly across the past decade: one in 2017, two in 2018, then one each in 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Nothing before 2017, and nothing in 2020 or 2021, when very little T20I cricket was played.
Varun Chakaravarthy's two in 45 innings
By frequency, Varun Chakaravarthy has the best record of the six: two five-wicket hauls in 45 innings of bowling, one every 22.5. Kuldeep Yadav's two came in 52 innings, one every 26. Bhuvneshwar Kumar needed 86 innings for his, Yuzvendra Chahal 79 and Arshdeep Singh 89.
Varun's two are also the most similar pair on the list — 5 for 17 at Gqeberha in November 2024 and 5 for 24 at Rajkot fourteen months later, both in a full four overs, both against sides trying to score at more than eight an over. He bowls a quicker, flatter mystery spin than a conventional wrist-spinner and neither spell involved a collapse against turn so much as a series of batters missing the ball entirely.
Deepak Chahar's single entry is the shortest career of the six: 25 innings of bowling, 31 wickets, and the best figures any Indian has recorded in the format. The detail of that spell and every other leading performance is on the page for India's best T20I bowling figures.
The four-wicket hauls that stopped short
| Bowler | 4w | 5w | Best |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardik Pandya | 3 | 0 | 4/16 |
| Ravichandran Ashwin | 2 | 0 | 4/8 |
| Ravi Bishnoi | 2 | 0 | 4/13 |
| Jasprit Bumrah | 1 | 0 | 4/15 |
| Shardul Thakur | 1 | 0 | 4/27 |
| Harshal Patel | 1 | 0 | 4/25 |
| Avesh Khan | 1 | 0 | 4/18 |
| Harbhajan Singh | 1 | 0 | 4/12 |
| Mukesh Kumar | 1 | 0 | 4/22 |
| Ashok Dinda | 1 | 0 | 4/19 |
| Zaheer Khan | 1 | 0 | 4/19 |
Hardik Pandya has taken four wickets in a T20I innings three times without ever taking five, which is the most four-wicket hauls of anyone yet to reach the higher mark. Jasprit Bumrah, who has more T20I overs than any other Indian and 121 wickets, has one four-for and no five-for at all — the most conspicuous absence in India's record for the format.
The list above is not exhaustive. Bowlers with a single four-wicket haul and small career wicket counts, among them Barinder Sran, Deepak Hooda, RP Singh and Mohammed Siraj, sit below this cut, and the full detail is on the page for India's most T20I four-wicket hauls.
Where and against whom
Four of the nine were taken in India, four away and one at a neutral venue in Dubai. England and South Africa have each conceded three, and Bangladesh, Afghanistan and New Zealand one each. Johannesburg is the only ground with two.
No five-wicket haul has been taken by an Indian against Australia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the West Indies or Zimbabwe. Those are small numbers rather than a pattern — India have played more T20Is against Sri Lanka than against South Africa — but the absence is worth stating rather than smoothing over.
Why the format produces so few
Three constraints work together. A bowler is capped at four overs, so his maximum exposure is a fifth of the innings. Batting sides frequently lose fewer than five wickets in twenty overs. And the overs a wicket-taking bowler is given tend to be the middle ones, while the collapses come at the death against bowlers who are simultaneously conceding twelve an over.
Arshdeep's 5 for 51 is the exception that proves the rule: it is the only five-wicket haul in India's record that cost more than 25, and it came in a match where New Zealand were chasing 272 and had no option but to keep swinging. Nine an over is the price of that kind of return, which the page on India's best T20I economy rates puts in context.
Four observations
The first is that four of the six are spinners, and the two seamers with five-fors — Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Deepak Chahar — took theirs with the new ball rather than at the death.
The second is that Bhuvneshwar's 5 for 4 at Dubai and Arshdeep's 5 for 51 at Thiruvananthapuram are the cheapest and most expensive five-wicket hauls in India's T20I record, 47 runs apart for the same number of wickets.
The third is that Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravi Bishnoi each have two four-wicket hauls and no five, and Ashwin's 4 for 8 against Sri Lanka is the most economical four-wicket spell India have recorded.
The fourth is that three of the six bowlers on the main table are still playing, so a third five-wicket haul by an Indian is a live possibility rather than a historical curiosity. The wider account 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
Career five-wicket and four-wicket haul counts, wickets, overs, innings of bowling, averages, economy rates and best figures come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru career query for India in men's T20 internationals, ordered first by five-wicket hauls and then by four-wicket hauls, with the team filter set to India. The individual spells table comes from the innings query for the same team and format ordered by wickets, and the nine rows there match the nine hauls counted in the career query, which is the check applied.
In the source the four-wicket column counts spells of exactly four wickets and the five-wicket column spells of five or more, so the two six-wicket returns appear in the latter. The frequency figures quoted in the prose are five-wicket hauls divided by innings of bowling. The four-wicket table is truncated where career wicket totals fall away, and that limitation is stated rather than presented as a complete list. The table reflects men's T20Is completed as of the August 2026 reading.