India T20I most maiden overs: All-Time Records

Jasprit Bumrah has bowled twelve maiden overs in T20 internationals for India. Bhuvneshwar Kumar has ten. Between them they account for roughly a third of every maiden an India bowler has managed in the format, and no other Indian has more than five.

Six deliveries without a run conceded is a small event in Test cricket and a substantial one in twenty overs. It removes 5% of a batting side's opportunity to score at no cost, and it is close to the highest-value single over a bowler can produce short of taking a wicket. It is also getting rarer: India's opponents now chase at rates that make a dot ball, let alone six of them, a genuine achievement.

The table below ranks by maidens and shows overs bowled alongside, because a bowler who has delivered 370 overs and a bowler who has delivered 34 are not competing on the same terms.

India's most T20I maiden overs

#	Bowler	Span	Inns	Overs	Mdns	Runs	Wkts	Ave	Econ
1	Jasprit Bumrah	2016-2026	92	335.4	12	2,188	121	18.08	6.51
2	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	2012-2022	86	298.3	10	2,079	90	23.10	6.96
3	Harbhajan Singh	2006-2016	27	102.0	5	633	25	25.32	6.20
4	Hardik Pandya	2016-2026	125	370.5	5	3,093	114	27.13	8.34
5	Arshdeep Singh	2022-2026	89	317.1	4	2,715	135	20.11	8.56
6	Ravindra Jadeja	2009-2024	71	226.0	4	1,612	54	29.85	7.13
7	Axar Patel	2015-2026	94	302.4	4	2,295	101	22.72	7.58
8	Ravichandran Ashwin	2010-2022	65	242.0	3	1,672	72	23.22	6.90
9	Ravi Bishnoi	2022-2026	48	184.4	3	1,377	67	20.55	7.45
10	Yuzvendra Chahal	2016-2023	79	294.0	2	2,409	96	25.09	8.19
11	Deepak Chahar	2018-2023	25	90.0	2	747	31	24.09	8.30
12	Kuldeep Yadav	2017-2026	52	187.5	2	1,306	95	13.74	6.95
13	Mohammed Siraj	2017-2026	17	62.0	2	481	17	28.29	7.75
14	Ashish Nehra	2009-2017	27	98.0	2	758	34	22.29	7.73
15	S Sreesanth	2006-2008	9	34.0	2	288	7	41.14	8.47
16	Ajit Agarkar	2006-2007	3	10.3	1	85	3	28.33	8.09
17	Khaleel Ahmed	2018-2024	18	66.0	1	562	16	35.12	8.51
18	Avesh Khan	2022-2024	24	83.1	1	752	27	27.85	9.04
19	Piyush Chawla	2010-2012	7	23.0	1	151	4	37.75	6.56
20	Ashok Dinda	2009-2012	9	30.0	1	245	17	14.41	8.16

Washington Sundar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Mohammed Shami and Krunal Pandya have one each and sit just below this cut.

Two bowlers, a third of the maidens

Jasprit Bumrah's twelve and Bhuvneshwar Kumar's ten are 22 of the 67 maidens accounted for in the table above. That is a remarkable concentration for a statistic that ought to be spread across every bowler who has ever opened the bowling for India in the format.

Both were new-ball bowlers with a yorker and a slower ball, both bowled in the powerplay where the field is up and the batter must take risks, and both had the accuracy to bowl six deliveries a batter could not reach. Bumrah's economy rate of 6.51 is the best of any Indian who has bowled fifty overs in T20Is, and Bhuvneshwar's 6.96 is fifth — the ranking is set out on the page for India's best T20I economy rates.

Bhuvneshwar's most famous over is part of his most famous spell. His 5 for 4 against Afghanistan at Dubai in September 2022 included a maiden, and it is the only five-wicket haul in India's T20I record to contain one.

Harbhajan Singh's rate

Harbhajan Singh bowled five maidens in 102 overs, one every 20.4 — the best frequency of any Indian who has bowled fifty overs in the format. Two of the five came in a single spell, 4 for 12 against England at the R Premadasa Stadium in the 2012 World Twenty20.

The caveat is the same one that applies to his career economy rate of 6.20. Most of his T20I bowling came between 2006 and 2012, when a total of 160 was competitive and batters played out overs from a defensive off-spinner rather than attacking him. A maiden was more available then, and Harbhajan was better than most at collecting them.

Overs per maiden

Bowler	Overs	Mdns	Overs per maiden
Harbhajan Singh	102.0	5	20.4
Jasprit Bumrah	335.4	12	28.0
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	298.3	10	29.9
Mohammed Siraj	62.0	2	31.0
Deepak Chahar	90.0	2	45.0
Ashish Nehra	98.0	2	49.0
Ravindra Jadeja	226.0	4	56.5
Ravi Bishnoi	184.4	3	61.6
Hardik Pandya	370.5	5	74.2
Axar Patel	302.4	4	75.7
Arshdeep Singh	317.1	4	79.3
Ravichandran Ashwin	242.0	3	80.7
Kuldeep Yadav	187.5	2	93.9
Yuzvendra Chahal	294.0	2	147.0

Yuzvendra Chahal's two maidens in 294 overs is the lowest frequency of any front-line India bowler — one every 147 overs, or about once every 37 matches. He bowled the middle overs as an attacking leg-spinner and conceded 8.19 an over doing it, so a scoreless over was almost never on offer.

Kuldeep Yadav is only slightly better at 93.9, despite an economy rate of 6.95. That combination — cheap overall, almost never a maiden — is characteristic of a wrist-spinner who concedes singles rather than boundaries. Six dot balls to a batter content to knock the ball into a gap is a different proposition from six dot balls to a batter trying to hit over the top.

The bowlers with none

Several Indians with substantial T20I workloads have never bowled a maiden. Shivam Dube has bowled 102 overs — the same as Harbhajan — without one. Shardul Thakur has 84.2 overs and none, Harshal Patel 83.5 and none, Yuvraj Singh 70.4 and none, and Yusuf Pathan 50.5 and none.

Four of those five bowled at the death or as part-time options in the middle, which is where the maiden effectively does not exist as a possibility. Thakur's economy rate of 9.15 and Dube's 9.69 are the two worst in India's qualified T20I record, and the empty maiden column is the same fact stated differently.

Four observations

The first is that seamers hold the top two places and five of the top six by rate. Spin produces cheap overs in this format and seam produces scoreless ones.

The second is that Hardik Pandya has bowled more T20I overs than any other Indian — 370.5 — and has five maidens, the same number as Harbhajan managed in 102.

The third is that Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, the two most-used finger spinners, have four maidens each from 226 and 302.4 overs. Their economy rates of 7.13 and 7.58 are good; their scoreless overs are rare.

The fourth is that maidens appear in only four of the twenty-five leading India T20I bowling spells, which is set out on the page for India's best T20I bowling figures — a wicket-taking over is very rarely also a scoreless one. The format's development for India is covered 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. Mohammed Siraj, with two from 62 overs, has the best rate of any active seamer outside the top two.

Sources and method

Maiden overs, overs bowled, innings of bowling, runs conceded, wickets, averages and economy rates come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru career query for India in men's T20 internationals ordered by maidens, with the team filter set to India. The table is truncated below one maiden, and the four bowlers on one that fall outside the cut are named rather than omitted silently.

The overs-per-maiden column is computed here by dividing overs by maidens, with part-overs converted to decimals; it is not a published statistic. The count of 67 maidens quoted in the prose is the sum of the maidens column in the table shown, not a total for all India bowlers in the format. The bowlers listed as having none were identified from the same career query ordered by balls bowled, checking the maidens column for every bowler above fifty overs. The presence of a maiden in Bhuvneshwar Kumar's 5 for 4 comes from the innings query. Data was pulled in August 2026, covering men's T20Is up to that point.