India Test most four wicket hauls: All-Time Records

Anil Kumble took exactly four wickets in a Test innings 31 times for India. Ravichandran Ashwin did it 25 times, Kapil Dev, Ravindra Jadeja and Erapalli Prasanna seventeen each. Add the five-wicket hauls and Kumble's total of four-or-more innings reaches 66, against Ashwin's 62 and nobody else past 41.

The four-for is the least celebrated bowling figure in cricket and the most revealing about workload. It records a bowler who did most of the damage without finishing the job, which happens either because a partner took the last one or because the innings ended first. A career full of them, like Ravi Shastri's eleven four-fors against two five-fors, describes a bowler who was always in the game and rarely allowed to run through it.

Two tables follow. The first counts innings of exactly four wickets, which is what Statsguru's four-wicket column records. The second adds the five-wicket hauls to give the total of four-or-more, which is the figure most readers actually want.

Most four-wicket innings for India in Tests

Innings of exactly four wickets. Bowlers with five or more are listed.

Rank	Player	Span	Innings bowled	Career wickets	Four-fors	Five-fors
1	Anil Kumble	1990-2008	236	619	31	35
2	Ravichandran Ashwin	2011-2024	200	537	25	37
=3	Kapil Dev	1978-1994	227	434	17	23
=3	Ravindra Jadeja	2012-2026	171	355	17	15
=3	Erapalli Prasanna	1962-1978	86	189	17	10
6	Harbhajan Singh	1998-2015	190	417	16	25
7	Zaheer Khan	2000-2014	165	311	15	11
8	Bishan Singh Bedi	1966-1979	118	266	13	14
=9	Bhagwath Chandrasekhar	1964-1979	97	242	12	16
=9	Mohammed Shami	2013-2023	122	229	12	6
11	Ravi Shastri	1981-1992	125	151	11	2
=12	Ishant Sharma	2007-2021	188	311	10	11
=12	Vinoo Mankad	1946-1959	70	162	10	8
=14	Subhash Gupte	1951-1961	61	149	8	12
=14	Mohammed Siraj	2020-2026	90	144	8	5
=14	Shivlal Yadav	1979-1987	61	102	8	3
=14	Javagal Srinath	1991-2002	121	236	8	10
=14	Ramakant Desai	1959-1968	45	74	8	2
=19	Jasprit Bumrah	2018-2025	99	234	7	16
=19	Srinivas Venkataraghavan	1965-1983	96	156	7	3
21	Umesh Yadav	2011-2023	112	170	6	3
=22	Pragyan Ojha	2009-2013	48	113	5	7
=22	Karsan Ghavri	1974-1981	69	109	5	4
=22	Maninder Singh	1982-1993	52	88	5	3

Four bowlers sit on four four-fors with careers of fewer than fifty Tests: Dilip Doshi, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshad Ayub and Washington Sundar. Ayub played thirteen Tests, Sundar had taken 41 wickets in eighteen by the middle of 2026.

Four or more wickets in an innings

Rank	Player	Four-fors	Five-fors	Four or more	Innings bowled
1	Anil Kumble	31	35	66	236
2	Ravichandran Ashwin	25	37	62	200
3	Harbhajan Singh	16	25	41	190
4	Kapil Dev	17	23	40	227
5	Ravindra Jadeja	17	15	32	171
6	Bhagwath Chandrasekhar	12	16	28	97
=7	Bishan Singh Bedi	13	14	27	118
=7	Erapalli Prasanna	17	10	27	86
9	Zaheer Khan	15	11	26	165
10	Jasprit Bumrah	7	16	23	99
11	Ishant Sharma	10	11	21	188
12	Subhash Gupte	8	12	20	61
=13	Javagal Srinath	8	10	18	121
=13	Mohammed Shami	12	6	18	122
=13	Vinoo Mankad	10	8	18	70
=16	Ravi Shastri	11	2	13	125
=16	Mohammed Siraj	8	5	13	90
18	Pragyan Ojha	5	7	12	48
19	Shivlal Yadav	8	3	11	61
=20	Srinivas Venkataraghavan	7	3	10	96
=20	Ramakant Desai	8	2	10	45
=20	Dilip Doshi	4	6	10	55

Kumble and Ashwin sit clear at the top on either measure, but the order underneath changes. Prasanna moves from joint third on four-fors to joint seventh on four-or-more; Bumrah from nineteenth to tenth. Chandrasekhar's 28 from 97 innings is the highest total of anyone with fewer than a hundred innings bowled.

Shastri's eleven and Bumrah's seven

Ravi Shastri took four wickets in a Test innings eleven times and five twice. That ratio — five and a half four-fors for every five-for — is the most extreme in the list, and it is a fair statistical portrait of his bowling: slow left-arm, tight, used in long spells to hold an end, and generally replaced when the batting side collapsed. His career economy of 2.35 sits alongside a strike rate of 104.3, the slowest of any India bowler with 150 wickets.

Jasprit Bumrah is the inverse. Seven four-fors and sixteen five-fors is the only case in India's Test history of a bowler with more than twice as many five-fors as four-fors, and it says that when he takes four he usually takes five. That is the signature of a strike bowler used in short, high-intensity bursts rather than for containment.

Mohammed Shami's twelve four-fors against six five-fors and Zaheer Khan's fifteen against eleven fall between the two extremes, which fits: both were front-line seamers who shared new-ball spells with a partner good enough to take the tail.

Prasanna's seventeen from 86 innings

Erapalli Prasanna bowled 86 Test innings for India and took four or more wickets in 27 of them, close to one innings in three. Only Subhash Gupte, with 20 from 61 innings, has a better rate among bowlers past fifty innings. Seventeen of Prasanna's 27 stopped at four.

He was the attacking off-spinner in a four-man spin attack, which meant he was usually bowling in tandem with Bedi at one end and Chandrasekhar or Venkataraghavan rotating at the other. In that arrangement the last wicket of an innings is close to a lottery, and the number of times Prasanna finished on four rather than five is the arithmetic consequence of playing with three other bowlers who were all also taking wickets. The context is set out on the spin bowling tradition page.

His best match figures, 11 for 140, came against New Zealand at Auckland in 1976, and his 8 for 76 in that game is the highest-placed away spell in India's list of best Test bowling figures. The two sides' Test history is on the India versus New Zealand Test record page.

Home and away four-fors

Player	Home	Away	Total
Anil Kumble	20	11	31
Ravichandran Ashwin	17	8	25
Ravindra Jadeja	14	3	17
Kapil Dev	11	6	17
Erapalli Prasanna	10	7	17
Harbhajan Singh	10	6	16
Zaheer Khan	5	10	15
Bishan Singh Bedi	9	4	13
Bhagwath Chandrasekhar	9	3	12
Mohammed Shami	4	7	12
Ravi Shastri	5	6	11
Ishant Sharma	3	7	10
Vinoo Mankad	9	1	10
Subhash Gupte	4	4	8
Mohammed Siraj	3	5	8
Javagal Srinath	4	4	8
Jasprit Bumrah	2	5	7

Rows may not sum to the total because innings at neutral venues fall into neither column.

Mankad's nine-to-one split is the most lopsided on the page, and Zaheer Khan's five-to-ten the most lopsided in the other direction. The seamers — Zaheer, Shami, Ishant Sharma, Siraj, Bumrah — collectively took 34 of their 52 four-fors away from home; the spinners took the reverse.

Four observations

The four-wicket column is not published in Statsguru's default Test bowling view, which is why lists of India's four-wicket hauls are hard to find and why this page explains its method below. Cricinfo tracks the figure and shows it when the results table is sorted on it.

Two of the top five on four-fors are still active or recently retired. Ravichandran Ashwin finished on 25 and Ravindra Jadeja has 17, and between them the two have taken four or more wickets in a Test innings 94 times.

Ramakant Desai is the surprise. He took 74 Test wickets in 28 matches between 1959 and 1968 and eight of those innings were four-wicket hauls, so 32 of his 74 wickets — more than two in five — arrived in a four-for. That is the highest such proportion of anyone on the list.

Only one bowler in the top twelve of the four-or-more table has fewer than a hundred innings bowled and more than twenty entries: Chandrasekhar, with 28 from 97. Anil Kumble's 66 took 236 innings, and Harbhajan Singh's 41 took 190. The five-wicket side of the same careers is ranked on the India Test most five wicket hauls page.

Sources and method

Four-wicket totals are taken from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru, filtered to India men's Test matches. The four-wicket column appears in the results table when it is used as the sort key; it counts innings in which a bowler took exactly four wickets, so the four-or-more figures on this page are the sum of the four-wicket and five-wicket columns rather than a separately published statistic.

Innings bowled counts every innings in which a bowler delivered at least one ball, which is why the rate comparisons in the text use that figure rather than matches. Home and away splits use Statsguru's venue classification and exclude neutral-venue matches.

Careers are indexed at the player directory and the wider setting at the cricket in India hub and on the history of Test cricket in India page. Figures were checked in August 2026.