India T20I Most fours in an innings: Match Records

The most fours India have hit in a men's T20 international innings is 27, at Pallekele on 27 July 2024. What makes that innings unusual is that nobody in it played a big hand. Suryakumar Yadav made 58, Rishabh Pant 49, Yashasvi Jaiswal 40 and Shubman Gill 34; the largest individual four-count was eight; and India finished on 213 for 7 having hit only seven sixes. It was a total assembled almost entirely in fours, on a Kandy surface where hitting straight down the ground was the harder option.

That distinction matters, because the four count and the six count behave differently. India's record for sixes in an innings has moved seven times and has more than doubled since 2009. The record for fours has moved four times in twenty years, and one of the four steps came in India's second-ever T20 international.

Below are the eleven India innings containing 22 fours or more.

India's most fours in a T20I innings

Fours	India total	Sixes	Opponent	Venue	Date	Result
27	213/7	7	Sri Lanka	Pallekele	27 Jul 2024	Won by 43 runs
26	231/5	10	South Africa	Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad	19 Dec 2025	Won by 30 runs
25	297/6	22	Bangladesh	Rajiv Gandhi Stadium, Hyderabad	12 Oct 2024	Won by 133 runs
25	237/3	13	South Africa	Barsapara Stadium, Guwahati	2 Oct 2022	Won by 16 runs
25	199/5	6	West Indies	Eden Gardens, Kolkata	1 Mar 2026	Won by 5 wickets
24	219/5	7	Zimbabwe	Harare Sports Club	25 Jul 2026	Won by 90 runs
23	222/3	9	Australia	Barsapara Stadium, Guwahati	28 Nov 2023	Lost by 5 wickets
23	198/8	5	England	Rose Bowl, Southampton	7 Jul 2022	Won by 50 runs
23	180/9	4	New Zealand	Wanderers, Johannesburg	16 Sep 2007	Lost by 10 runs
22	244/4	11	West Indies	Lauderhill, Florida	27 Aug 2016	Lost by 1 run
22	225/7	11	Ireland	Malahide, Dublin	28 Jun 2022	Won by 4 runs

Six further innings reached 21 fours, among them the 260 for 5 at Indore in December 2017 and the 234 for 4 against New Zealand at Ahmedabad in February 2023.

The 2007 mark that stood for fifteen years

India hit 14 fours in their first T20 international, at Johannesburg in December 2006. Nine months later, at the same ground in their opening group match of the 2007 World Twenty20, they hit 23 — and lost. New Zealand were bowled out for 190 and India, batting their full twenty overs, finished on 180 for 9.

The composition of that 23 is a period piece. Gautam Gambhir made 51 with five fours, Virender Sehwag 40 from 17 balls with six, and — the detail that dates the innings most precisely — Sreesanth came in at number nine and hit four fours in a 19 from ten balls. India hit four sixes in the whole innings. A modern India side would consider that a failure of method; in September 2007 it was simply how a chase was constructed.

The 23 then held for exactly fifteen years, until 25 fours against South Africa at Guwahati on 2 October 2022. Pallekele took it to 27 in July 2024. Those are the only four times the record has changed hands.

An innings of fours and nothing else

Pallekele is the most four-dependent innings in India's T20 international history. Twenty-seven fours account for 108 of the 213 runs, and the seven sixes for 42, so more than half the total came in fours alone.

Suryakumar Yadav's 58 from 26 balls was the only fifty in the innings and his eight fours the largest individual count. The next three scores were 49, 40 and 34, and the biggest stand was 76 for the third wicket. Sri Lanka replied with 170 and lost by 43 runs.

The contrast with the innings directly above it in the ranking is instructive. India's 297 for 6 against Bangladesh at Hyderabad in October 2024 contains 25 fours and 22 sixes, and it is their highest T20I team total. Pallekele's 27 fours produced 213. The four is a useful unit for keeping a scoring rate above eight; the very large totals need the other kind.

Fourteen from one bat at Trent Bridge

The largest number of fours any India batter has hit in a T20 international innings is fourteen, by Suryakumar Yadav in his 117 from 55 balls against England at Trent Bridge on 10 July 2022. India lost that match by 17 runs, chasing 216, and no other India hundred in the format contains as many fours.

Behind him: Ruturaj Gaikwad hit thirteen in 123 against Australia at Guwahati in November 2023, and Yashasvi Jaiswal thirteen in 93 not out at Harare in July 2024. Sanju Samson's twelve in a 97 from 50 balls at Eden Gardens on 1 March 2026 was the top score in India's 2026 T20 World Cup win over West Indies. Suryakumar's method — square of the wicket on both sides, off the back foot — is covered on the Suryakumar Yadav profile, and Samson's on the Sanju Samson profile.

Fours have grown slowly. Sixes have not.

Set the two boundary types side by side across India's T20 international history and the divergence is stark. The table below covers every India innings of at least thirty balls, a threshold that excludes rain-shortened fragments where a handful of deliveries would distort the averages.

Period	India innings	Fours per innings	Sixes per innings	Runs per innings
2006–2011	29	12.6	5.6	155
2012–2016	45	13.2	3.9	148
2017–2020	57	13.0	6.6	167
2021–2023	75	14.2	7.2	167
2024–2026	65	14.7	9.0	177

From the first period to the most recent, the four count per innings has risen by about a sixth. The six count has risen by roughly three fifths. Average scores are up 22 runs an innings, and almost all of that increase is accounted for by sixes.

There is a straightforward reason. A four is limited by the field: as fielding standards improved through the 2010s, the number of shots that used to run away to the boundary and now get cut off went up. A six is limited only by the batter. India's selection has followed the arithmetic — the middle order picked from 2017 onwards was built to clear the rope rather than to pierce the ring, and the most sixes in a T20I innings list shows the result.

The boundary mix in India's biggest totals

Set the four and six counts against each other in India's highest T20 international totals and the ratio moves around far more than the totals do.

India total	Fours	Sixes	Runs in boundaries	Share of the total
297/6 v Bangladesh, Hyderabad, 2024	25	22	232	78%
283/1 v South Africa, Johannesburg, 2024	17	23	206	73%
271/5 v New Zealand, Thiruvananthapuram, 2026	17	23	206	76%
260/5 v Sri Lanka, Indore, 2017	21	21	210	81%
256/4 v Zimbabwe, Chennai, 2026	17	17	170	66%
255/5 v New Zealand, Ahmedabad, 2026	19	18	184	72%
253/7 v England, Mumbai, 2026	18	19	186	74%

Two things follow. The 297 is the only one of the seven with more fours than sixes, and it is also the highest — the largest total India have made came from the most complete boundary innings rather than the most six-heavy one. And the 256 against Zimbabwe at Chepauk got to within 41 runs of the record total with the fewest boundaries of the group, which means an unusual amount of running: 86 of those 256 runs came in ones, twos and threes plus extras.

Pallekele sits outside this table because 213 is not a very large total, but its split is the interesting one. Of 213 runs, 150 came in boundaries and 108 of those in fours — the highest four share of any India innings of 200 or more.

The three that were lost

Three of the eleven innings ended in defeat, which does not happen anywhere on the sixes list. India lost the Johannesburg match of 2007 by 10 runs, the Lauderhill match of August 2016 by 1 run, and the Guwahati match of November 2023 by 5 wickets.

Two of the three are among the highest-scoring games India have played. At Lauderhill, West Indies made 245 for 6 — Evin Lewis 100 and Johnson Charles 79 — and India replied with 244 for 4, KL Rahul making 110 from 51 balls with twelve fours. At Guwahati, Gaikwad's 123 took India to 222 for 3 and Australia replied with 225 for 5 off the final ball of the match.

The pattern is not that fours lose matches. It is that a high four-count is more common in the very high-scoring games where both sides get to bat well, whereas the biggest six-counts have tended to come in matches India won by a distance. The India versus Australia T20I record covers the Guwahati game in the context of a rivalry that has produced several 200-plus chases.

What the list says about how India build totals

Grounds appear more than once for a reason. Guwahati is on the list twice and both innings were unusually four-heavy for their totals; the Barsapara outfield is fast and the boundaries are not short. Eden Gardens, Pallekele and the Rose Bowl are all grounds with genuine square boundaries where cutting and pulling pays.

Six of the eleven innings were played in Asia and five outside it, which is a more even spread than the sixes list produces. India's home surfaces since 2022 account for most of the Asian entries: true bounce, hard outfields and short square boundaries at several of the newer venues.

Eight of the eleven innings were played batting first. The three chases are Lauderhill in 2016, Kolkata in March 2026 and Johannesburg in 2007, and two of the three ended in defeat — a chase caps the runs available and offers no reward for a four-count that falls short. Full chase records are on the highest successful chases page.

Finally, the record itself looks more vulnerable than it did. The 27 at Pallekele has been approached twice in two years, by the 26 at Ahmedabad in December 2025 and the 25 at Eden Gardens in March 2026. The wider arc of how India's approach to the format changed is set out in the history of India's T20 internationals and across the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Four counts on this page are computed from public ball-by-ball records of every men's T20 international involving India, from December 2006 to matches completed before 1 August 2026. A four is counted where four runs were credited to the batter off a single delivery. That is the same basis official scorecards use, and it means the small number of all-run fours are included and boundaries arising from overthrows or extras are not.

The era table applies a qualification threshold of thirty balls faced. Rain-shortened innings would otherwise be weighted equally with completed ones.

Totals, margins and individual scores come from the match scorecards. Individual four-counts are for the innings named, not for a career. The figures are current to 19 August 2026; the record has moved four times in twenty years and should be expected to move again.