India Test most ducks: All-Time Records

Ishant Sharma was out for nought 34 times in Test cricket for India, from 142 innings. That is the most by any India player, and it is very nearly one innings in four. Zaheer Khan is second on 29, Jasprit Bumrah third on 28 from only 78 innings, and the pattern of the list is established immediately: this is a leaderboard of fast bowlers.

There is nothing surprising in that, and the page would be dull if it stopped there. A number eleven who plays a hundred Tests will collect ducks in volume because he faces good bowlers with the field up and has never been picked to bat. The duck count for a tail-ender is closer to a measure of longevity than of failure.

The names worth stopping on are the ones that do not fit. Virender Sehwag is tenth with 16, Virat Kohli fourteenth with 15, Sachin Tendulkar eighteenth with 14 and Sunil Gavaskar twenty-fifth with 12. Those are top-order batters with long careers, and their positions on this list say something quite different from Ishant's.

Most Test ducks for India

Rank	Player	Span	Matches	Innings	Runs	Batting average	Ducks	Ducks per innings
1	Ishant Sharma	2007-2021	105	142	785	8.26	34	24%
2	Zaheer Khan	2000-2014	92	127	1231	11.95	29	23%
3	Jasprit Bumrah	2018-2025	52	78	348	6.56	28	36%
4	Bhagwath Chandrasekhar	1964-1979	58	80	167	4.07	23	29%
5	Bishan Bedi	1966-1979	67	101	656	8.98	20	20%
6	Harbhajan Singh	1998-2015	103	145	2224	18.22	19	13%
7	Mohammed Shami	2013-2023	64	89	750	12.09	18	20%
=8	Anil Kumble	1990-2008	132	173	2506	17.77	17	10%
=8	Mohammed Siraj	2020-2026	48	65	192	5.05	17	26%
=10	Virender Sehwag	2001-2013	103	178	8503	49.43	16	9%
=10	Kapil Dev	1978-1994	131	184	5248	31.05	16	9%
=12	Erapalli Prasanna	1962-1978	49	84	735	11.48	15	18%
=12	Dilip Vengsarkar	1976-1992	116	185	6868	42.13	15	8%
=12	Virat Kohli	2011-2025	123	210	9230	46.85	15	7%
=15	Dilip Doshi	1979-1983	33	38	129	4.60	14	37%
=15	Pankaj Roy	1951-1960	43	79	2442	32.56	14	18%
=15	VVS Laxman	1996-2012	134	225	8781	45.97	14	6%
=15	Sachin Tendulkar	1989-2013	200	329	15921	53.78	14	4%
=19	Srinivas Venkataraghavan	1965-1983	57	76	748	11.68	13	17%
=19	Javagal Srinath	1991-2002	67	92	1009	14.21	13	14%
=19	Chandu Borde	1958-1969	55	97	3061	35.59	13	13%
=19	Sourav Ganguly	1996-2008	113	188	7212	42.17	13	7%
=23	Mohinder Amarnath	1969-1988	69	113	4378	42.50	12	11%
=23	Cheteshwar Pujara	2010-2023	103	176	7195	43.60	12	7%
=23	Sunil Gavaskar	1971-1987	125	214	10122	51.12	12	6%
=26	Maninder Singh	1982-1993	35	38	99	3.80	11	29%
=26	Vijay Manjrekar	1951-1965	55	92	3208	39.12	11	12%
=26	Ashish Nehra	1999-2004	17	25	77	5.50	11	44%
=29	MS Dhoni	2005-2014	90	144	4876	38.09	10	7%
=29	Ajinkya Rahane	2013-2023	85	144	5077	38.46	10	7%

Ducks per innings is rounded to the nearest whole percentage point and is calculated on total innings, including not-outs.

Rate, not total: who was actually dismissed for nought most often

Player	Innings	Ducks	Ducks per innings
Ashish Nehra	25	11	44%
Dilip Doshi	38	14	37%
Jasprit Bumrah	78	28	36%
Bhagwath Chandrasekhar	80	23	29%
Maninder Singh	38	11	29%
Mohammed Siraj	65	17	26%
Ishant Sharma	142	34	24%
Zaheer Khan	127	29	23%

This table uses a twenty-five innings minimum, because a duck rate over a handful of innings tells you nothing. Even so, every name in it is a specialist bowler, and the ordering is close to a ranking of who batted lowest for longest.

Ashish Nehra's 44 per cent is the highest rate in Indian Test cricket among players with a meaningful sample: he was dismissed without scoring in nearly half his innings. Jasprit Bumrah's 36 per cent is the highest among players with more than fifty innings, and his career is still running.

Bhagwath Chandrasekhar is a special case even among bowlers. He finished with 167 runs from 80 innings at 4.07, having been born with a right arm affected by polio, and his batting was never any part of why India picked one of the finest wrist-spinners the game has produced.

The batters on the list

Batter	Innings	Ducks	Rate	Career average
Virender Sehwag	178	16	9%	49.43
Dilip Vengsarkar	185	15	8%	42.13
Virat Kohli	210	15	7%	46.85
Pankaj Roy	79	14	18%	32.56
VVS Laxman	225	14	6%	45.97
Sachin Tendulkar	329	14	4%	53.78
Sourav Ganguly	188	13	7%	42.17
Cheteshwar Pujara	176	12	7%	43.60
Sunil Gavaskar	214	12	6%	51.12

Virender Sehwag's nine per cent is the highest among India's great batters and is entirely consistent with how he played. An opener who attacks the new ball from the first over will be dismissed for nought more often than one who does not, and the same method produced two triple-hundreds. The ducks and the triple-centuries are the same decision seen from two ends.

Sachin Tendulkar's 14 from 329 innings, a rate of four per cent, is the lowest of any India batter with more than 200 innings. Pankaj Roy's 18 per cent is by some distance the highest of any specialist batter here, from a career opening the batting for a weak India side in the 1950s against Lindwall, Miller, Trueman and Statham.

What a duck actually costs

A duck is the most visible failure in cricket and one of the least informative. A batter dismissed for nought in the first over of a Test has failed once; a batter who makes 12 has also failed, and the difference between them is almost nothing in the match. India lost Tests in the 1950s with three ducks in an innings and won Tests in the 2000s with two.

The figure that would matter more is where the ducks cluster — whether they fell overseas against the moving ball or at home, in first innings or fourth. That split is not visible from career totals, and this page does not claim to compute it. Anyone drawing conclusions about a batter's temperament from a duck column alone is reading more than the number contains.

Three observations

Nine of the top ten by total are bowlers, and the one exception, Virender Sehwag, is there because he faced more new balls than almost anyone. Read the total column as an index of how many innings a player batted low in the order, not as a record of failure.

The rate column reverses the ranking almost completely. Ishant leads on total with 34 but sits seventh on rate; Nehra has a third as many ducks and the highest rate in Indian cricket. Both figures are true, and they answer different questions — one about a career's length, the other about a player's batting.

India's modern tail is dismissed for nought more often than its historical one, on this evidence. Bumrah at 36 per cent and Mohammed Siraj at 26 sit above Bedi's 20 and Prasanna's 18. Spinners of the 1970s batted more and faced the new ball less, and the shift toward four-seamer attacks has changed what a number ten and eleven are asked to do. The bowling careers behind these figures are ranked at India Test most wickets, and the fast-bowling story is on the fast bowling evolution page.

The batting counterpart to this page is India Test best batting average, and the spin tradition that produced Chandrasekhar and Bedi is covered on the spin bowling tradition page. Careers are indexed at the player directory, and the wider setting is at the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

All duck totals come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru career records for India men's Test cricket, read in August 2026 and covering matches to that date. Only Tests played for India count.

A duck is a completed innings of nought. An innings in which a batter is not out without scoring is not a duck and is not counted, which is the standard convention. Ducks per innings divides ducks by total innings including not-outs, so the rate slightly understates the proportion of completed dismissals that were ducks; it is presented this way because innings is the figure Statsguru publishes alongside the duck count.

The rate table applies a twenty-five innings minimum. Below that threshold a duck rate is dominated by sample size — a bowler with four innings and two ducks would head the list — and the ranking would be meaningless. Where this page attributes a duck rate to batting position or era, that is an interpretation offered to explain the number rather than something the figures themselves establish.