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India T20I most four wicket hauls: All-Time Records

By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India8 min read

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Three India bowlers have taken exactly four wickets in a T20 international innings three times: Hardik Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Two of the three have also taken five wickets twice, so on any measure of big spells Kuldeep and Bhuvneshwar sit clear of the field with five four-or-better returns each.

Pandya's three are different in kind. He has never taken five in the format across 125 innings of bowling, the most of any Indian without a five-wicket haul, and his career economy rate of 8.34 is the third-worst among India's regular T20I bowlers. Three four-wicket hauls and no five-for from that volume is the profile of a sixth bowler who occasionally runs through a tail.

In the source used here the four-wicket column counts spells of exactly four, and spells of five or more are counted separately. That is why Deepak Chahar, whose best figures are 6 for 7, has a zero in the four-wicket column.

India bowlers with a T20I four-wicket haul

# Bowler Span Inns Wkts Best Ave Econ 4w 5w 4+
1 Hardik Pandya 2016-2026 125 114 4/16 27.13 8.34 3 0 3
2 Kuldeep Yadav 2017-2026 52 95 5/17 13.74 6.95 3 2 5
3 Bhuvneshwar Kumar 2012-2022 86 90 5/4 23.10 6.96 3 2 5
4 Arshdeep Singh 2022-2026 89 135 5/51 20.11 8.56 2 1 3
5 Yuzvendra Chahal 2016-2023 79 96 6/25 25.09 8.19 2 1 3
6 Ravichandran Ashwin 2010-2022 65 72 4/8 23.22 6.90 2 0 2
7 Ravi Bishnoi 2022-2026 48 67 4/13 20.55 7.45 2 0 2
8 Jasprit Bumrah 2016-2026 92 121 4/15 18.08 6.51 1 0 1
9 Varun Chakaravarthy 2021-2026 45 74 5/17 17.36 7.67 1 2 3
10 Shardul Thakur 2018-2022 24 33 4/27 23.39 9.15 1 0 1
11 Harshal Patel 2021-2023 24 29 4/25 26.55 9.18 1 0 1
12 Avesh Khan 2022-2024 24 27 4/18 27.85 9.04 1 0 1
13 Harbhajan Singh 2006-2016 27 25 4/12 25.32 6.20 1 0 1
14 Mukesh Kumar 2023-2024 17 20 4/22 24.35 9.01 1 0 1
15 Ashok Dinda 2009-2012 9 17 4/19 14.41 8.16 1 0 1
16 Zaheer Khan 2006-2012 17 17 4/19 26.35 7.63 1 0 1
17 Mohammed Siraj 2017-2026 17 17 4/17 28.29 7.75 1 0 1
18 Krunal Pandya 2018-2021 19 15 4/36 36.93 8.10 1 0 1
19 RP Singh 2007-2009 9 15 4/13 15.00 6.81 1 0 1
20 Pragyan Ojha 2009-2010 6 10 4/21 13.20 6.28 1 0 1
21 Shivam Mavi 2023-2023 6 7 4/22 17.57 8.78 1 0 1

The list is ordered by four-wicket hauls and then by career wickets, and it thins out rather than ending: one or two bowlers with a single four-for and fewer than seven career T20I wickets, Barinder Sran and Deepak Hooda among them, sit below the last row shown.

The cheapest four-wicket spells

Bowler Figures Econ Overs Opponent Venue Date
Kuldeep Yadav 4/7 3.23 2.1 UAE Dubai 10 Sep 2025
Ravichandran Ashwin 4/8 2.00 4.0 Sri Lanka Visakhapatnam 14 Feb 2016
Arshdeep Singh 4/9 2.25 4.0 USA New York 12 Jun 2024
Deepak Hooda 4/10 3.52 2.5 New Zealand Mount Maunganui 20 Nov 2022
Ravichandran Ashwin 4/11 3.30 3.2 Australia Mirpur 30 Mar 2014
Harbhajan Singh 4/12 3.00 4.0 England Colombo 23 Sep 2012
Ravi Bishnoi 4/13 3.25 4.0 Zimbabwe Harare 6 Jul 2024
Jasprit Bumrah 4/15 3.75 4.0 New Zealand Ahmedabad 8 Mar 2026
Hardik Pandya 4/16 4.00 4.0 New Zealand Ahmedabad 1 Feb 2023
Mohammed Siraj 4/17 4.25 4.0 New Zealand Napier 22 Nov 2022

Kuldeep Yadav's 4 for 7 against the United Arab Emirates in September 2025 came in 2.1 overs — thirteen deliveries — and is the cheapest four-wicket haul India have recorded. Ravichandran Ashwin's 4 for 8 at Visakhapatnam is the cheapest across a full four-over allocation, at 2.00 an over.

At the other end, Krunal Pandya's 4 for 36 cost nine an over and Shardul Thakur's 4 for 27 close to seven. A four-wicket haul is not evidence of a good spell on its own, and the range from 4 for 7 to 4 for 36 is 29 runs for the same line in the wickets column.

How often each one does it

Bowler 4+ wicket hauls Inns Innings per haul
Kuldeep Yadav 5 52 10.4
Varun Chakaravarthy 3 45 15.0
Bhuvneshwar Kumar 5 86 17.2
Yuzvendra Chahal 3 79 26.3
Ravi Bishnoi 2 48 24.0
Arshdeep Singh 3 89 29.7
Ravichandran Ashwin 2 65 32.5
Hardik Pandya 3 125 41.7
Jasprit Bumrah 1 92 92.0

Kuldeep produces a spell of four or more once every 10.4 innings, which is comfortably the best rate of any India bowler with a substantial career in the format. Hardik Pandya needs 41.7 and Jasprit Bumrah 92.

Bumrah's row is the counter-intuitive one. He has 121 T20I wickets at 18.08 and the best economy rate of any Indian who has bowled fifty overs, and exactly one four-wicket haul — 4 for 15 against New Zealand at Ahmedabad in March 2026. He takes one or two wickets almost every match and rarely four, which is what a bowler used across three separate phases of an innings tends to produce.

The one-off four-fors

Fourteen of the twenty-one names have a single four-wicket haul. Four of them — Mohammed Siraj, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh and Pragyan Ojha — took theirs in fewer than eighteen innings of T20I bowling, and Ojha's 4 for 21 came in a six-innings career in 2009 and 2010.

Ashok Dinda's line is the most curious. Nine innings, 17 wickets, a strike rate of 10.5 that would be the best in India's record if the sample were larger, and one four-wicket haul. Harbhajan Singh's 4 for 12 against England at Colombo in the 2012 World Twenty20 is the only entry from a bowler whose T20I career began in the format's first year.

Four observations

The first is that only two Indians have taken five spells of four or more wickets, and both have taken exactly five. Nobody has six.

The second is that spinners hold seven of the twenty-one places and account for eleven of the four-wicket hauls counted here, which is more than their share of India's T20I overs.

The third is that four of the ten cheapest four-wicket spells were bowled against New Zealand, and three of those four came away from India or at Ahmedabad. Details of every leading performance are on the page for India's best T20I bowling figures.

The fourth is that Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Kuldeep are the only Indians to appear near the top of both this page and the ranking of India's most T20I five-wicket hauls, where six bowlers share nine spells. 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 career records in the player directory. Arshdeep Singh and Ravi Bishnoi, both active, are the most likely names to move.

Sources and method

Four-wicket and five-wicket haul counts, career wickets, innings of bowling, averages, economy rates and best figures come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru career query for India in men's T20 internationals ordered by four-wicket hauls, with the team filter set to India. The four-wicket column in that source counts spells of exactly four wickets and the five-wicket column spells of five or more; the "4+" column here is the sum of the two and is computed rather than published.

The table of cheapest spells comes from the innings query for the same team and format ordered by wickets and then by runs conceded. The frequency column is innings of bowling divided by four-or-better hauls. The main table is truncated where career wicket totals fall below seven, and the existence of further single four-wicket hauls below that point is stated rather than implied. Figures were read in August 2026 and cover men's T20Is completed to that date; spans ending in 2026 belong to bowlers whose counts may still rise.