India T20I Longest winning streaks: Match Records
Written and checked by CricketTakenPublished Cricket in India9 min read
India's longest sequence of men's T20 international wins is twelve, and it began three days after they were knocked out of a World Cup. Having lost to Pakistan and New Zealand in the group stage at the 2021 tournament, India beat Afghanistan at Abu Dhabi on 3 November 2021, then Scotland and Namibia in dead matches at Dubai, then swept New Zealand, West Indies and Sri Lanka three-nil at home. The run ended at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 9 June 2022, when South Africa chased 212 with five balls to spare.
Nothing else in the record comes close on wins alone. The next-longest is eight, at the 2024 World Cup. But five sequences are longer than eight if you count matches without defeat rather than matches won, because India have tied seven men's T20Is and have never lost the tiebreak that followed.
Both measures are given below. Neither is more correct than the other; they answer different questions.
Consecutive wins: every India sequence of five or more
A defeat or a tie ends a sequence. Matches abandoned or ruled no-result are skipped rather than counted as breaks, and the two sequences that contain one are marked.
| Wins | From | To | Opponents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 3 Nov 2021 | 27 Feb 2022 | Afghanistan, Scotland, Namibia, New Zealand, West Indies, Sri Lanka |
| 8 | 5 Jun 2024 | 29 Jun 2024 | Ireland, Pakistan, USA, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Australia, England, South Africa (one washout inside) |
| 7 | 28 Dec 2012 | 4 Apr 2014 | Pakistan, Australia, West Indies, Bangladesh, South Africa |
| 7 | 12 Feb 2016 | 6 Mar 2016 | Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates |
| 7 | 8 Mar 2018 | 3 Jul 2018 | Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ireland, England |
| 7 | 31 Jan 2025 | 24 Sep 2025 | England, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Oman, Bangladesh |
| 6 | 14 Jun 2022 | 9 Jul 2022 | South Africa, Ireland, England (one washout inside) |
| 6 | 18 Aug 2023 | 26 Nov 2023 | Ireland, Nepal, Bangladesh, Australia (two washouts inside) |
| 6 | 7 Jul 2024 | 28 Jul 2024 | Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka |
| 5 | 19 Sep 2007 | 20 Oct 2007 | England, South Africa, Australia, Pakistan |
| 5 | 7 Nov 2017 | 18 Feb 2018 | New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Africa |
| 5 | 11 Dec 2019 | 26 Jan 2020 | West Indies, Sri Lanka, New Zealand (one washout inside) |
The 2012-14 sequence is the strangest entry. Seven wins spread across fifteen months, with only two matches — Ahmedabad in December 2012 and Rajkot in October 2013 — played before the run compressed into five games at Mirpur in a fortnight during the 2014 World T20. It ended at the semi-final stage of that tournament, with a win over South Africa; India then lost the final to Sri Lanka two days later.
The twelve, match by match
| # | Opponent | Venue | Date | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Afghanistan | Abu Dhabi | 3 Nov 2021 | 66 runs |
| 2 | Scotland | Dubai (DICS) | 5 Nov 2021 | 8 wickets |
| 3 | Namibia | Dubai (DICS) | 8 Nov 2021 | 9 wickets |
| 4 | New Zealand | Jaipur | 17 Nov 2021 | 5 wickets |
| 5 | New Zealand | Ranchi | 19 Nov 2021 | 7 wickets |
| 6 | New Zealand | Eden Gardens | 21 Nov 2021 | 73 runs |
| 7 | West Indies | Eden Gardens | 16 Feb 2022 | 6 wickets |
| 8 | West Indies | Eden Gardens | 18 Feb 2022 | 8 runs |
| 9 | West Indies | Eden Gardens | 20 Feb 2022 | 17 runs |
| 10 | Sri Lanka | Lucknow | 24 Feb 2022 | 62 runs |
| 11 | Sri Lanka | Dharamsala | 26 Feb 2022 | 7 wickets |
| 12 | Sri Lanka | Dharamsala | 27 Feb 2022 | 6 wickets |
Nine of the twelve came in three clean sweeps of three-match home series, and four of them were played at Eden Gardens: the last match of the New Zealand series in November and all three against West Indies in February. Only one of the twelve was won by fewer than ten runs or with fewer than five wickets in hand — the eight-run defence of 186 against West Indies on 18 February — so this was not a run of escapes.
The change of regime in the middle of it
The first three wins belonged to the old order. Virat Kohli was captaining India for the last time in the format at the 2021 tournament, and the matches against Scotland and Namibia were played after elimination was already confirmed. The tournament's full story is on the 2021 T20 World Cup page.
By the time India played New Zealand at Jaipur a fortnight later, Rohit Sharma was captain and Rahul Dravid had replaced Ravi Shastri as head coach. The side that swept those three matches contained Venkatesh Iyer and Harshal Patel alongside the established names, and the shift towards a deeper batting order and a specialist death-bowling group dates from roughly this point. That series is set out on the India versus New Zealand T20I record page.
The run ended against South Africa in the first match of a home series in June 2022. India made 211 for 4 at Delhi and lost by seven wickets; the fixture history is on the India versus South Africa T20I record page.
How the record itself has moved
India's own best mark has changed hands only twice in twenty years. The table below lists the match at which each new figure was reached.
| New record | Match at which it was set | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | v Australia, Brabourne Stadium | 20 Oct 2007 |
| 6 | v Australia, Mirpur | 30 Mar 2014 |
| 7 | v South Africa, Mirpur | 4 Apr 2014 |
| 8 | v West Indies, Eden Gardens | 18 Feb 2022 |
| 9 | v West Indies, Eden Gardens | 20 Feb 2022 |
| 10 | v Sri Lanka, Lucknow | 24 Feb 2022 |
| 11 | v Sri Lanka, Dharamsala | 26 Feb 2022 |
| 12 | v Sri Lanka, Dharamsala | 27 Feb 2022 |
Read as a summary, that is three moments: five in October 2007, seven in April 2014, twelve in February 2022. The mark of five stood for six and a half years, the mark of seven for very nearly eight, and the current figure has now stood for more than four. India played over a hundred T20 internationals between April 2014 and February 2022 without threatening the record once.
The 2024 World Cup: eight wins and no defeat at all
The eight-match run in June 2024 is the more significant achievement even though it is four shorter, because every match was a World Cup match and the eighth was the final. India beat Ireland, Pakistan and the United States in New York, had the Lauderhill fixture against Canada washed out, then beat Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Australia, England and South Africa on the way to the title.
India were the first men's side to win a T20 World Cup without losing a match. The campaign is covered on the 2024 T20 World Cup page. It is also the only entry on the streak table where the sequence and a tournament run are the same thing: the other eleven all stitch together matches from separate series.
Unbeaten runs are the longer measure
| Matches unbeaten | Wins | Ties | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 12 | 0 | 3 Nov 2021 | 27 Feb 2022 |
| 12 | 11 | 1 | 14 Dec 2023 | 29 Jun 2024 |
| 11 | 10 | 1 | 7 Jul 2024 | 8 Nov 2024 |
| 10 | 8 | 2 | 11 Dec 2019 | 6 Dec 2020 |
| 9 | 8 | 1 | 31 Jan 2025 | 28 Sep 2025 |
Counted this way, the six months from December 2023 to the World Cup final match the 2021-22 run exactly. That sequence includes the extraordinary Bengaluru match of 17 January 2024, in which India and Afghanistan tied the game, tied the first super over, and only separated in a second one.
The 2019-20 entry is the loosest of the five: ten matches spread over almost twelve months, containing two tied games against New Zealand at Hamilton and Wellington that India won in super overs, and interrupted by long gaps in the calendar.
Seven ties, seven tiebreaks, no losses
India have tied seven men's T20 internationals. Six went to a tiebreak and India won all six — the bowl-out against Pakistan at Durban in 2007, super overs against New Zealand at Hamilton and Wellington in 2020, the double super over against Afghanistan in 2024, and super overs against Sri Lanka at Pallekele in July 2024 and Dubai in September 2025.
The seventh, at Napier in November 2022, was tied on Duckworth-Lewis-Stern par when rain ended the match with India nine overs into their chase, and there was no tiebreak to play. That perfect record is the single reason the unbeaten table above looks so different from the wins table, and it is unlikely to survive indefinitely.
What the long runs have in common
Nine of the twelve matches in the 2021-22 streak were played in India, the other three at Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and every sequence of six or more except the 2024 World Cup run contains at least one home series. India's home record in this format is the engine of the streaks, which is not a surprise but is worth stating with the numbers attached.
The opponents are less concentrated than you might expect. Across the twelve sequences listed above, Pakistan appear in seven, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and South Africa in six each, and England and New Zealand in five. Only Scotland, Oman, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Hong Kong and the Netherlands appear once, and no sequence of five or more is made up entirely of matches against associate opposition.
Finally, the streaks cluster around tournaments rather than avoiding them. Five of the six longest begin or end at an ICC event or an Asia Cup, which is the opposite of what the "flat-track bullies" reading of India's T20I record would predict. What happens when the sequence runs the other way is set out on the longest India T20I losing streaks page, and the format's arc in Indian hands on the T20 international history page. The cricket in India hub links the rest of the archive.
Sources and method
Sequences are computed from the complete chronological list of India's men's T20 internationals as recorded in ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru results view, filtered to India and ordered by start date. Every match with a result is included; matches abandoned without a ball bowled and matches ruled no-result are skipped rather than treated as breaks, and each sequence containing one is flagged in the table.
The distinction between "consecutive wins" and "consecutive matches unbeaten" is the main methodological choice on this page. A tie is not a win, so it ends a winning streak; it is also not a defeat, so it does not end an unbeaten run. Both counts are given rather than one being presented as the record.
Details of captaincy, coaching appointments and squad composition come from the relevant tour and tournament records and are descriptive context, not figures derived from the sequences. Records are current to 19 August 2026.