Highest T20I Partnerships for India: Full List (2026)

India's largest partnership in a men's Twenty20 international is 210, and nobody broke it. Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma came together at 73 for 1 at the Wanderers on 15 November 2024 and were still batting at 283 for 1 when the twenty overs ran out — Tilak on 120 from 47 balls, Samson on 109 from 56. South Africa lost by 135 runs.

It is the only India stand in the format worth more than 200, and the innings that contained it is the only India Twenty20 innings in which two batters have both reached a hundred. The next-largest, 190 between Rohit Sharma and Rinku Singh against Afghanistan at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in January 2024, was also unbroken, and it began at 22 for 4 — four wickets down inside the first four overs, then 190 added without another falling. India still did not win that match in regulation: Afghanistan tied it.

Fifty-two partnerships of a hundred or more appear in India's men's T20I record, and every one of them was for the first five wickets. No sixth-wicket or lower stand has ever reached three figures. The ranked list below covers all eighteen worth 130 or more.

Every India T20I stand of 130 or more

Runs	Wkt	Pair	Opponent	Venue	Date	India's innings	Result
210*	2nd	Sanju Samson, Tilak Varma	South Africa	Johannesburg	15 Nov 2024	283/1	Won by 135 runs
190*	5th	Rohit Sharma, Rinku Singh	Afghanistan	Bengaluru	17 Jan 2024	212/4	Match tied
176	2nd	Deepak Hooda, Sanju Samson	Ireland	Malahide, Dublin	28 Jun 2022	225/7	Won by 4 runs
173	2nd	Sanju Samson, Suryakumar Yadav	Bangladesh	Hyderabad	12 Oct 2024	297/6	Won by 133 runs
165	1st	Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul	Sri Lanka	Indore	22 Dec 2017	260/5	Won by 88 runs
165	1st	Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill	West Indies	Lauderhill	12 Aug 2023	179/1	Won by 9 wickets
160	1st	Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan	Ireland	Malahide, Dublin	27 Jun 2018	208/5	Won by 76 runs
158	1st	Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan	New Zealand	Delhi	1 Nov 2017	202/3	Won by 53 runs
156*	1st	Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill	Zimbabwe	Harare	13 Jul 2024	156/0	Won by 10 wickets
141*	4th	Ruturaj Gaikwad, Tilak Varma	Australia	Guwahati	28 Nov 2023	222/3	Lost by 5 wickets
140	1st	Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul	Afghanistan	Abu Dhabi	3 Nov 2021	210/2	Won by 66 runs
138	2nd	Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli	South Africa	Dharamsala	2 Oct 2015	199/5	Lost by 7 wickets
137	2nd	Abhishek Sharma, Ruturaj Gaikwad	Zimbabwe	Harare	7 Jul 2024	234/2	Won by 100 runs
137	3rd	Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav	New Zealand	Thiruvananthapuram	31 Jan 2026	271/5	Won by 46 runs
136	1st	Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir	England	Durban	19 Sep 2007	218/4	Won by 18 runs
135	1st	Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul	West Indies	Wankhede, Mumbai	11 Dec 2019	240/3	Won by 67 runs
134	3rd	Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina	Australia	Adelaide	26 Jan 2016	188/3	Won by 37 runs
130	3rd	Shikhar Dhawan, Rishabh Pant	West Indies	Chennai	11 Nov 2018	182/4	Won by 6 wickets

An asterisk marks a stand that was still intact when the innings closed. Nine of the eighteen were opening stands, and those have a list of their own on the India T20I highest opening partnerships page; this page exists for the other nine, the ones built after a wicket had already gone.

Johannesburg, 15 November 2024

India had already taken the series when they came to the Wanderers for the fourth match. Abhishek Sharma went early. What followed was the fastest sustained scoring anywhere in India's T20I record: 210 runs in a little over sixteen overs, Tilak Varma reaching his second hundred in three days after 107 not out at Centurion two nights earlier, and Samson his third of the calendar year.

Two things make the stand unusual beyond its size. Neither batter was dismissed, so 210 is a floor rather than a ceiling — the partnership was ended by the scorecard, not by a bowler. And 283 for 1 remains the only India innings of 270 or more in which they lost a single wicket; the rest of the India T20I highest team totals list is made up of innings that closed four, five or six down.

For all that, 210 is not the largest partnership in men's T20 international history. Two are bigger: 258 unbroken by a Japanese opening pair against China in February 2024, and 236 by Hazratullah Zazai and Usman Ghani for Afghanistan against Ireland at Dehradun in February 2019. India's mark is the largest by a pair from a side that plays the format regularly against other established teams, which is a narrower claim and the honest one. The fixture that produced it runs through the India versus South Africa T20I record page.

Twenty-two for four, and 190 after it

The Bengaluru match of 17 January 2024 is the one entry where the partnership is the whole story of the innings. Afghanistan's seamers removed Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli and Sanju Samson for 22 inside the first four overs. Rohit Sharma, playing his first Twenty20 international in fourteen months, was already at the crease; Rinku Singh joined him and neither of them left.

Rohit finished on 121 not out from 69 balls, Rinku on 69 not out from 39, and 212 for 4 was more than a hundred runs beyond anything the innings had promised at the fourth over. Afghanistan then matched it exactly, 212 for 6, to tie the game. The first super over was tied as well. India won the second.

So India's second-largest partnership sits against a result that is not a win, and Rohit's hundred came in a match he also finished by batting in both super overs. The nine-match ledger between the sides is on the India versus Afghanistan T20I record page, and the ground's wider history on the M Chinnaswamy Stadium records page.

The best stand at each wicket

Wkt	Runs	Pair	Opponent	Venue	Date
1st	165	Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul	Sri Lanka	Indore	22 Dec 2017
2nd	210*	Sanju Samson, Tilak Varma	South Africa	Johannesburg	15 Nov 2024
3rd	137	Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav	New Zealand	Thiruvananthapuram	31 Jan 2026
4th	141*	Ruturaj Gaikwad, Tilak Varma	Australia	Guwahati	28 Nov 2023
5th	190*	Rohit Sharma, Rinku Singh	Afghanistan	Bengaluru	17 Jan 2024
6th	91	Suryakumar Yadav, Axar Patel	Sri Lanka	Pune	5 Jan 2023
7th	63*	Dinesh Karthik, Krunal Pandya	New Zealand	Hamilton	10 Feb 2019
8th	61	Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh	New Zealand	Christchurch	25 Feb 2009
9th	48	Deepak Chahar, Umesh Yadav	South Africa	Indore	4 Oct 2022
10th	17*	Sreesanth, RP Singh	New Zealand	Johannesburg	16 Sep 2007

The 165 for the first wicket is shared with Jaiswal and Gill at Lauderhill in August 2023. Every other row is held outright.

Read down the runs column and the arithmetic of the format is plain. The top five wickets have produced 165, 210, 137, 141 and 190. The bottom five stop at 91, 63, 61, 48 and 17. There is no India sixth-wicket hundred stand because a side six down before the fifteenth over is rarely batting long enough to make one, and a side six down after it has too few balls left to try. Krunal Pandya's 63 not out with Dinesh Karthik at Hamilton came in a chase India lost by four runs, and is the closest a lower-order stand has come to settling one of these matches.

The pairs who have made the most runs together

Qualification: fifteen or more innings batting together for India in men's T20 internationals.

Pair	Span	Inns	Runs	Best	Ave	100 stands	50 stands
Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul	2016-2022	42	1,897	165	46.26	5	10
Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan	2013-2019	52	1,743	160	33.51	4	7
Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli	2010-2024	42	1,350	138	32.14	3	5
Virat Kohli, KL Rahul	2017-2022	27	1,015	119	39.03	2	6
MS Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh	2007-2017	23	730	102*	38.42	1	5
Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina	2011-2018	21	703	134	37.00	1	5
Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson	2024-2026	28	696	98	24.85	0	4
Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav	2021-2024	17	642	104	45.85	2	2
Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli	2013-2021	17	615	94	38.43	0	6
Abhishek Sharma, Shubman Gill	2024-2025	19	599	105	33.27	1	4
Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer	2022-2026	14	599	80	42.78	0	5

Rohit Sharma is one half of the top three entries, and those three pairings alone account for 4,990 partnership runs — more than the next four rows have produced between them. His record across the format is set out on the Rohit Sharma profile.

The Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson row rewards a second look. Twenty-eight innings together, more than any other current pair, and no hundred stand: their best is the 98 they made in the World Cup final at Ahmedabad in March 2026 before Abhishek was dismissed for 52 from 21 balls. They average under twenty-five together while both average comfortably more individually, which is what an opening pair looks like when both batters attack from the first ball — the stands are short and violent rather than long. Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson both have profiles here.

One pair on the list is a genuine middle-order combination: MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh, twenty-three innings together between 2007 and 2017 for 730 runs. Nothing since has come near it, because India's middle order has turned over faster than the top of the order has.

Seven marks since Durban

New record	Wkt	Pair	Match	Date
136	1st	Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir	v England, Durban	19 Sep 2007
138	2nd	Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli	v South Africa, Dharamsala	2 Oct 2015
158	1st	Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan	v New Zealand, Delhi	1 Nov 2017
165	1st	Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul	v Sri Lanka, Indore	22 Dec 2017
176	2nd	Deepak Hooda, Sanju Samson	v Ireland, Malahide	28 Jun 2022
190*	5th	Rohit Sharma, Rinku Singh	v Afghanistan, Bengaluru	17 Jan 2024
210*	2nd	Sanju Samson, Tilak Varma	v South Africa, Johannesburg	15 Nov 2024

Before Kingsmead, the biggest stand India had made in the format was 76, by the same two openers against New Zealand at Johannesburg three days earlier. The 136 then stood for eight years and a fortnight — longer than any other India mark in this list — until Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli put on 138 at Dharamsala, in a match India lost by seven wickets.

The pace of the last four years is the real story of that table. Four of the seven marks were set between June 2022 and November 2024, and the current figure has stood for less than two years. India played 78 Twenty20 internationals between the 136 and the 138 without threatening the record; they have played a comparable number since June 2022 and reset it three times. The India T20 international history guide traces the change in method behind that.

Six of the fifty-two did not produce a win

Forty-six of India's fifty-two hundred-run stands came in wins, five in defeats and one in the Bengaluru tie. The five defeats are worth naming, because they show what a large partnership does not guarantee.

Runs	Wkt	Pair	Match	India's innings	Result
141*	4th	Ruturaj Gaikwad, Tilak Varma	v Australia, Guwahati, 28 Nov 2023	222/3	Lost by 5 wickets
138	2nd	Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli	v South Africa, Dharamsala, 2 Oct 2015	199/5	Lost by 7 wickets
119	4th	Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer	v England, Nottingham, 10 Jul 2022	198/9	Lost by 17 runs
107	4th	MS Dhoni, KL Rahul	v West Indies, Lauderhill, 27 Aug 2016	244/4	Lost by 1 run
100	4th	MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli	v Australia, Bengaluru, 27 Feb 2019	190/4	Lost by 7 wickets

Four of the five were fourth-wicket stands, which is a pattern rather than an accident: a big fourth-wicket partnership usually means India lost three cheaply, recovered to a competitive total, and had nothing left in reserve. Lauderhill is the extreme case — 244 for 4, and West Indies got there with a ball to spare to win by one run.

What the hundred-run stands say about the batting order

Period	100+ stands
2006-2015	5
2016-2021	19
2022-2026	28

More than half of India's hundred-run T20I partnerships have been made since the start of 2022, and four separate years — 2018, 2022, 2023 and 2024 — produced six or seven each. Part of that is the fixture list, since India play far more Twenty20 internationals now than they did before 2016. The rest is the scoring rate the India T20I most sixes in an innings list documents from the other direction.

The wicket distribution across all fifty-two is sixteen for the first, fourteen for the second, twelve for the third, seven for the fourth and three for the fifth. West Indies have conceded eight and New Zealand seven, more than any other opponents; Bangladesh's five are examined on the India versus Bangladesh T20I record page.

Two Indian grounds have produced three each, Rajkot and Hyderabad, and three abroad: Harare, Malahide and Ahmedabad. Malahide is the only venue outside a Test-playing country's main circuit on that list, and both Irish entries came in the same week of June 2022. Everything else the Indian game covers starts from the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Partnership figures come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru fall-of-wickets records for India in men's Twenty20 internationals, read on 21 August 2026. The most recent match included is the third Twenty20 international against Zimbabwe at Harare on 26 July 2026.

A partnership is credited to the wicket at which it ended; an unbroken stand carries an asterisk and is credited to the wicket that would have fallen next. The "India's innings" column gives the team total for the innings the stand belonged to and the result column the outcome of the match, both from the same match records, so a large partnership in a losing cause appears here rather than being filtered out.

The count of fifty-two hundred-run stands, the wicket distribution and the period splits are computed from the full list of India partnerships of 100 or more, not from the fifty rows the records page displays by default. The most-productive-pairs table carries a floor of fifteen innings batting together, printed above it, because a pair average built on five innings is not comparable with one built on fifty.

Individual scores quoted in the prose are each batter's total for that innings rather than their contribution inside the stand. The two larger partnerships in world T20I cricket were checked against the overall partnership records rather than inferred from India's list. Records of this kind move with every series; nothing here is estimated, and any figure that could not be verified against the match record has been left out.