India ODI Most fours in an innings: Match Records

India hit 48 fours in a one-day international innings at Indore on 8 December 2011, which is more than any other innings in their history and is very likely to stay that way. Virender Sehwag made 219 from 149 balls with 25 fours of his own, Gautam Gambhir and he put on 176 for the first wicket, and India finished on 418 for 5 against West Indies. They won by 153 runs.

Second on the list is 47, at Eden Gardens against Sri Lanka in November 2014, in a total of 404 for 5. After that the list drops to 43 and stays in the low forties for a long stretch.

The interesting thing about this table is not its top. It is that the top has barely moved in fourteen years while India's six-hitting has almost tripled over the same period. Boundary hitting has not increased. It has changed shape.

India ODI innings by fours hit

Fours	India total	Sixes	Opponent	Venue	Date	Result
48	418/5	7	West Indies	Holkar Stadium, Indore	8 Dec 2011	Won by 153 runs
47	404/5	10	Sri Lanka	Eden Gardens, Kolkata	13 Nov 2014	Won by 153 runs
43	292/5	1	Pakistan	Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore	13 Feb 2006	Won by 5 wickets
43	414/7	12	Sri Lanka	Rajkot	15 Dec 2009	Won by 3 runs
42	324/6	5	England	Headingley	2 Sep 2007	Won by 38 runs
42	363/5	5	Sri Lanka	R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo	3 Feb 2009	Won by 147 runs
42	381/6	12	England	Barabati Stadium, Cuttack	19 Jan 2017	Won by 15 runs
41	328	4	Pakistan	Arbab Niaz Stadium, Peshawar	6 Feb 2006	Lost by 7 runs
41	401/3	12	South Africa	Captain Roop Singh Stadium, Gwalior	24 Feb 2010	Won by 153 runs
41	409/8	14	Bangladesh	Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, Chattogram	10 Dec 2022	Won by 227 runs
40	329/7	3	England	Bristol	24 Aug 2007	Won by 9 runs
40	351/4	4	Australia	VCA Stadium, Nagpur	30 Oct 2013	Won by 6 wickets
40	377/5	10	West Indies	Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai	29 Oct 2018	Won by 224 runs
39	362/1	11	Australia	Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur	16 Oct 2013	Won by 9 wickets
39	375/5	7	Sri Lanka	R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo	31 Aug 2017	Won by 168 runs
39	373/7	7	Sri Lanka	Barsapara Stadium, Guwahati	10 Jan 2023	Won by 67 runs
38	353/5	6	New Zealand	Hyderabad (Deccan)	15 Nov 2003	Won by 145 runs
38	317/8	3	England	Kennington Oval	5 Sep 2007	Won by 2 wickets
38	387/5	13	England	Gwalior	14 Nov 2008	Won by 158 runs
38	326/2	11	West Indies	Barsapara Stadium, Guwahati	21 Oct 2018	Won by 8 wickets

The Indore innings

Sehwag's 219 at Indore was, when he made it, the highest individual score in one-day international cricket, and it is still the highest by an India batter. He hit 25 fours and 7 sixes, and the ratio is the point: an innings of 219 that clears the rope seven times is a study in placement rather than power.

The rest of India's 418 was assembled around him — Gambhir's 67, Suresh Raina's 55 not out — and the innings total of 48 fours means better than one boundary every six deliveries across fifty overs, sustained. West Indies replied with 265 and lost by 153.

What makes it hard to beat is that a modern order attempting 418 would get there differently. The highest ODI team totals list is now topped by innings with fifteen or more sixes; four-hitting on this scale requires a batter who does not try to clear the field, batting for forty overs, on a fast outfield. That combination has become rarer.

The four count has not risen

The table below counts every India innings of at least twenty overs faced. The threshold keeps rain-shortened innings and quick chases from distorting the averages.

Period	Qualifying innings	Fours per innings	Sixes per innings	Runs per innings
2002–2006	86	22.2	2.5	231
2007–2011	150	22.5	3.6	248
2012–2016	105	21.8	4.1	247
2017–2020	82	24.9	5.1	268
2021–2026	82	23.7	6.6	265

Across twenty-four years the four count moves from 22.2 to 23.7 — a rise of about seven per cent, with a dip in the middle period and a peak in 2017-20 rather than at the end. Over the identical span the six count goes from 2.5 to 6.6.

Runs per innings rose by thirty-four in the same time. Almost all of that increase is accounted for by sixes: roughly four extra sixes an innings is twenty-four runs, against about six runs from the extra fours. India are not finding the boundary more often than they did in 2003. They are clearing it far more often when they do.

Why 2006 and 2007 keep appearing

Five of the twenty innings come from 2006 and 2007, which sits oddly against everything above. The explanation is in the sixes column: those five innings have 1, 4, 5, 3 and 3 sixes respectively. They are innings of 292, 328, 324, 329 and 317 — modest totals by any later standard — that nonetheless produced forty boundaries because almost every boundary was a four.

The Lahore innings of February 2006 is the extreme case. India made 292 for 5 chasing 288 against Pakistan, and hit 43 fours and a single six. A total of 292 with 43 fours means 172 of those runs came in fours alone, and the innings still only just cleared five and a half an over. That is what one-day batting looked like before the six became the default answer.

Both 2006 entries come from the same series in Pakistan, and both are covered within the India versus Pakistan ODI record. The Peshawar match is the only defeat in the table.

Grounds, opponents and the outlier

Sri Lanka appear five times, England four, West Indies three, Pakistan and Australia twice each. Guwahati and the Premadasa each appear twice; so does Gwalior, at two different names in the source scorecards, hosting the 401 for 3 against South Africa in February 2010 and the 387 for 5 against England in November 2008.

The Gwalior innings of 2010 deserves its own note: Sachin Tendulkar made 200 not out in it, the first double hundred in men's one-day international cricket, with 25 fours and 3 sixes. It sits ninth here on 41 team fours. Like Sehwag's 219 at Indore the following year, it was a double century built substantially along the ground — the two highest individual scores in India's one-day history both belong to this table rather than to the six-hitting one.

Nineteen of the twenty innings were won, several by very large margins: 227 runs at Chattogram, 224 at the Brabourne, 168 at Colombo. The India versus Sri Lanka ODI record covers the fixture that contributes most rows, and the Eden Gardens records page covers the ground where the second-placed 47 was hit.

Four things worth drawing out

The record predates the scoring boom. India's highest four count came in 2011 and their second highest in 2014. Both fall before the period in which their run rate rose fastest. A record that is not being approached during a scoring surge is a record measuring something the surge did not affect.

Fours and sixes trade off within an innings. The 292 at Lahore has 43 fours and one six. The 349 for 8 against South Africa at Ranchi in November 2025 has 22 fours and sixteen sixes, and does not appear in this table at all despite being a higher total. The most sixes in an ODI innings list and this one share only four entries out of twenty each.

Very high four counts need a long individual innings. Sehwag's 219, Tendulkar's 200 not out, Rohit Sharma's 264 at Eden Gardens in the 404 for 5 — the top of this table is essentially a list of India's largest individual scores. Forty-plus fours as a team is what happens when one batter faces 140 or more deliveries and keeps finding the gaps.

The middle period genuinely dipped. Fours per innings fell from 22.5 to 21.8 between 2007-11 and 2012-16 while runs per innings held steady. India in those years were converting boundary chances into sixes faster than they were creating new ones, which is the transitional moment the whole table is really recording.

The wider arc of how India's fifty-over batting developed is covered in the history of India's ODI cricket, the individual lists sit on the most ODI fours page, and the rest of the national records are indexed from the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Four counts were computed from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball archive of men's one-day internationals (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), covering India matches up to 19 July 2026. A four is counted where exactly four runs were credited to the batter from a single legitimate delivery. Boundaries that resulted from overthrows, and any four charged as byes, leg byes, wides or no-balls, are excluded, because scorecards credit those to the extras column rather than to a batter.

The archive's one-day record for India starts in June 2002. Innings before that date are outside this ranking. India's one-day sides of the 1980s and 1990s scored more of their runs in fours than the modern team does, so an innings from that period could in principle belong in this table; nothing here should be read as a claim that no earlier India innings reached 38 fours.

Period figures use a qualification threshold of twenty overs faced. Where innings tie on fours, the earlier date is listed first. Totals, margins and individual scores are as recorded on the match scorecards. Figures are current to 21 August 2026.