India T20I Biggest wins by wickets: Match Records
Written and checked by CricketTakenPublished Cricket in India10 min read
Twice in men's T20 internationals India have chased a target without losing a wicket, and both times the ground was Harare Sports Club. The first was on 20 June 2016, when KL Rahul and Mandeep Singh knocked off 100 in 13.1 overs. The second was on 13 July 2024, when Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill needed 153 and had it inside sixteen. Eight years and one month apart, same city, same result line.
Below those two there are seven nine-wicket wins and eleven by eight, which makes twenty India victories in this format where nine or ten batters never had to pad up. Every one of them came batting second, which is the obvious point about a wickets margin and worth stating once: a side batting first cannot record one. Of India's 190 men's T20I wins, 85 have come chasing, so this list is the top fifth of that subset.
What the twenty have in common is not the size of the target. It ranges from Zimbabwe's 99 for 9 to a West Indies total of 178 for 8. What they share is that the top order got a start and nobody interrupted it.
Every India T20I win by eight wickets or more
Balls to spare is taken from the scorecard. Targets are the opposition first-innings total, except where a rain revision applied, which is flagged below the table.
| Margin | Balls to spare | Opposition innings | India's reply | Opponent | Venue | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 wickets | 41 | 99/9 (20.0) | 103/0 (13.1) | Zimbabwe | Harare | 20 Jun 2016 |
| 10 wickets | 28 | 152/7 (20.0) | 156/0 (15.2) | Zimbabwe | Harare | 13 Jul 2024 |
| 9 wickets | 93 | 57 (13.1) | 60/1 (4.3) | United Arab Emirates | Dubai (DICS) | 10 Sep 2025 |
| 9 wickets | 64 | 96/9 (20.0) | 97/1 (9.2) | Bangladesh | Hangzhou | 6 Oct 2023 |
| 9 wickets | 59 | 81/9 (20.0) | 82/1 (10.1) | United Arab Emirates | Mirpur | 3 Mar 2016 |
| 9 wickets | 37 | 82 (18.0) | 84/1 (13.5) | Sri Lanka | Visakhapatnam | 14 Feb 2016 |
| 9 wickets | 28 | 132/8 (20.0) | 136/1 (15.2) | Namibia | Dubai (DICS) | 8 Nov 2021 |
| 9 wickets | 18 | 178/8 (20.0) | 179/1 (17.0) | West Indies | Lauderhill | 12 Aug 2023 |
| 9 wickets | 3 | 118/8 (18.4) | 49/1 (5.3) | Australia | Ranchi | 7 Oct 2017 |
| 8 wickets | 81 | 85 (17.4) | 89/2 (6.3) | Scotland | Dubai (DICS) | 5 Nov 2021 |
| 8 wickets | 60 | 153/9 (20.0) | 155/2 (10.0) | New Zealand | Guwahati | 25 Jan 2026 |
| 8 wickets | 46 | 96 (16.0) | 97/2 (12.2) | Ireland | New York | 5 Jun 2024 |
| 8 wickets | 26 | 153/6 (20.0) | 154/2 (15.4) | Bangladesh | Rajkot | 7 Nov 2019 |
| 8 wickets | 20 | 106/8 (20.0) | 110/2 (16.4) | South Africa | Thiruvananthapuram | 28 Sep 2022 |
| 8 wickets | 18 | 128 (19.4) | 129/2 (17.0) | Pakistan | Colombo (RPS) | 30 Sep 2012 |
| 8 wickets | 15 | 112/8 (18.0) | 113/2 (15.3) | Ireland | Nottingham | 10 Jun 2009 |
| 8 wickets | 10 | 159/8 (20.0) | 163/2 (18.2) | England | Manchester | 3 Jul 2018 |
| 8 wickets | 9 | 138/7 (20.0) | 141/2 (18.3) | Bangladesh | Mirpur | 28 Mar 2014 |
| 8 wickets | 7 | 120/5 (15.0) | 122/2 (13.5) | Bangladesh | Mirpur | 6 Mar 2016 |
| 8 wickets | 2 | 131 (19.4) | 135/2 (19.4) | Australia | Melbourne | 3 Feb 2012 |
Two entries need a qualification. The Ranchi match of October 2017 was interrupted by rain with Australia 118 for 8 after 18.4 overs, and India's target was recalculated to 48 from six overs; they reached 49 for 1 in 5.3. The Mirpur match of March 2016 was the Asia Cup final, cut to fifteen overs a side before a ball was bowled.
Harare, June 2016: a second-string side and a first ten-wicket win
India toured Zimbabwe that winter with almost none of the Test and one-day regulars. MS Dhoni captained a squad in which Mandeep Singh and Barinder Sran were new or nearly new to international cricket, and KL Rahul had been dismissed for nought on T20I debut two days earlier.
Zimbabwe were held to 99 for 9. Rahul and Mandeep then put on 103 without being separated, Mandeep finishing on 52 from 40 balls and Rahul on 47 from 40. It was the first time India had won a men's T20 international without losing a wicket, and it came in a series nobody at home was watching closely, which is a fair summary of how a good many T20I records get set.
Harare, July 2024: Jaiswal and Gill do it again
The 2024 repeat had the same venue and a similar backdrop. India had won the 2024 T20 World Cup three weeks earlier, and the squad sent to Zimbabwe under Shubman Gill contained almost nobody from that final. India had already lost the opening match of the series.
Zimbabwe made 152 for 7 in the fourth game. Jaiswal reached 93 not out from 53 balls with thirteen fours, Gill 58 not out from 39, and the target went down with 28 balls unused. Their stand of 156 is the largest unbroken opening partnership India have made in the format. The rest of that fixture's ledger sits on the India versus Zimbabwe T20I record page.
The nine-wicket group, and one that was barely a chase
Six of the seven nine-wicket wins followed the pattern you would expect: the opposition were bowled out or held cheaply and one Indian batter got out along the way. The Dubai win over the United Arab Emirates in September 2025 was the most extreme. Kuldeep Yadav took four for 7 and Shivam Dube three for 4 as the UAE were dismissed for 57 in 13.1 overs; Abhishek Sharma made 30 from 16 and India finished the game in 4.3 overs, with 93 balls to spare. That is the largest ball-margin in India's T20I history, and the Asia Cup has produced several of the format's most lopsided results for the same reason: associate sides drawn against full members on a good surface.
The Ranchi win over Australia in October 2017 is the odd one. Kuldeep Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah took two wickets each in an innings shortened by rain to 18.4 overs, and India's revised chase was 48 in six. Rohit Sharma fell for 11; Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan finished it. A nine-wicket margin in a six-over chase is a different thing from a nine-wicket margin in a twenty-over one, and the table records both without pretending they are equivalent. The wider Australia ledger is on the India versus Australia T20I record page.
The Hangzhou win over Bangladesh in October 2023 came in the Asian Games semi-final, played by an India squad captained by Ruturaj Gaikwad. Tilak Varma made 55 not out from 26 balls and India were home in 9.2 overs.
Balls to spare tells a different story from wickets
Rank the same twenty matches by balls unused rather than wickets in hand and the order changes almost completely. The eight-wicket win over Scotland at Dubai in November 2021, finished in 6.3 overs, comes second overall; the ten-wicket win at Harare in 2024 drops to eighth.
| Balls to spare | Margin | Match |
|---|---|---|
| 93 | 9 wickets | v United Arab Emirates, Dubai, 10 Sep 2025 |
| 81 | 8 wickets | v Scotland, Dubai, 5 Nov 2021 |
| 64 | 9 wickets | v Bangladesh, Hangzhou, 6 Oct 2023 |
| 60 | 8 wickets | v New Zealand, Guwahati, 25 Jan 2026 |
| 59 | 9 wickets | v United Arab Emirates, Mirpur, 3 Mar 2016 |
The Guwahati match of January 2026 belongs in any discussion of the fastest of these. New Zealand made 153 for 9; Abhishek Sharma answered with 68 not out from 20 balls and Suryakumar Yadav 57 not out from 26, and the target was passed in exactly ten overs. Neither ten-wicket win was struck at anything like that rate.
How the era splits fall
| Period | Wins by 8+ wickets | T20Is played | Wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006-2012 | 3 | 46 | 24 |
| 2013-2017 | 6 | 48 | 31 |
| 2018-2022 | 5 | 104 | 68 |
| 2023-2026 | 6 | 98 | 67 |
The rate is flat once you allow for volume: roughly one in eight matches in the middle period, one in twenty in the busiest one. Playing far more cricket has not made these wins proportionally more common, and the reason is that the modern schedule contains fewer of the mismatches that produce them. India's fixture list between 2018 and 2022 was dominated by full-member bilateral series, in which a target under 120 is rare.
Who has been on the end of it
Bangladesh appear four times, more than any other side, and no two of those four are alike: a World T20 group game at Mirpur in 2014, the 2016 Asia Cup final at the same ground, a bilateral match at Rajkot in 2019 and the Asian Games semi-final in 2023. Zimbabwe, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland and Australia each appear twice.
Only one of the twenty came against England, at Old Trafford in July 2018. None came against Sri Lanka away from home, and only one against South Africa. Evenly matched fixtures do not produce these scorelines, which is the same conclusion the biggest India T20I wins by runs page reaches from the other direction, and it is visible again in the India versus Bangladesh T20I record.
Four things worth taking from the list
The two ten-wicket wins involved four different batters and no overlap of personnel, and neither pair was India's first-choice opening combination at the time. Both were, in effect, auditions that went well.
Nine of the twenty came at neutral venues, which is high for a country that plays as much home cricket as India do. ICC events, Asia Cups and the Asian Games put India against sides they outclass more often than the bilateral calendar does.
The oldest entry is from June 2009 and the newest from January 2026, with no long gap anywhere in between except between 2019 and 2021. India have never gone much more than thirty months without one.
Finally, the wickets column flatters some of these matches and understates others. A two-wicket win with a ball to spare is a harder day's work than an eight-wicket win with two balls left, and the Melbourne match of February 2012, finished at 135 for 2 off the last ball of the twentieth over, sits at the bottom of this table for exactly that reason. The other end of that scale is set out on the closest India T20I wins by wickets page, and the matches where India could not get near a small total on the lowest completed T20I totals page. For how the format took hold in Indian cricket, the T20 international history page covers the ground, and the cricket in India hub links the rest.
Sources and method
Margins, balls remaining, innings totals and individual scores are taken from the scorecards of India's men's T20 internationals and cross-checked against ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru match-results list for India, filtered to wins carrying a wickets margin. The threshold of eight wickets is a cut-off chosen to keep the table readable: a nine-wicket bar would leave nine matches and a seven-wicket bar would leave forty-seven.
Duckworth-Lewis-Stern revisions are noted where they apply rather than absorbed into the table, because a nine-wicket margin in a six-over chase and a nine-wicket margin in a twenty-over chase are not the same achievement. Matches abandoned without a result are excluded throughout.
Era counts use the full men's T20I fixture list including no-results, so the "T20Is played" column is larger than wins plus losses for each period. Remarks about squad composition and about which fixtures produce lopsided scorelines are descriptive readings of the record rather than figures derived from it. Records are current to 19 August 2026.