India Test Most sixes in an innings: Match Records

India batted a second time at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot in February 2024 with a first-innings lead of 126, and declared on 430 for 4. Eighteen scoring shots in that innings cleared the rope — 108 runs in the air — and twelve of the eighteen were struck by Yashasvi Jaiswal, who finished 214 not out. No India innings in Test cricket has cleared the rope more often.

Jaiswal's twelve is also the joint-highest number of sixes by any batter in a Test innings, level with Wasim Akram's twelve in his 257 not out against Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura in 1996. Jaiswal had retired hurt on 104 the previous evening with back spasms, walked out again the next morning and added another 110.

The table below covers every India Test innings with ten or more sixes. All fifteen were made in the last seventeen years, and twelve of them since the start of 2019, which says something about how quickly the shot has moved from ornament to method.

Every India Test innings with ten sixes or more

6s	4s	India's innings	Balls	Innings	Opponent	Venue	Date	Result
18	35	430/4d	588	3rd	England	Rajkot	15 Feb 2024	Won by 434 runs
15	76	726/9d	981	2nd	Sri Lanka	Brabourne, Mumbai	2 Dec 2009	Won by an innings and 24 runs
14	31	323/4d	402	3rd	South Africa	Visakhapatnam	2 Oct 2019	Won by 203 runs
13	58	502/7d	816	1st	South Africa	Visakhapatnam	2 Oct 2019	Won by 203 runs
13	57	497/9d	699	1st	South Africa	Ranchi	19 Oct 2019	Won by an innings and 202 runs
13	56	493/6d	684	2nd	Bangladesh	Indore	14 Nov 2019	Won by an innings and 130 runs
13	54	477	745	2nd	England	Dharamsala	7 Mar 2024	Won by an innings and 64 runs
13	48	427/6d	498	3rd	England	Edgbaston	2 Jul 2025	Won by 336 runs
11	64	649/9d	899	1st	West Indies	Rajkot	4 Oct 2018	Won by an innings and 272 runs
11	28	285/9d	208	2nd	Bangladesh	Kanpur	27 Sep 2024	Won by 7 wickets
11	25	276/7d	420	3rd	New Zealand	Wankhede, Mumbai	3 Dec 2021	Won by 372 runs
10	70	759/7d	1,144	2nd	England	Chennai	16 Dec 2016	Won by an innings and 75 runs
10	43	571	1,073	2nd	Australia	Ahmedabad	9 Mar 2023	Match drawn
10	53	462	597	3rd	New Zealand	Bengaluru	16 Oct 2024	Lost by 8 wickets
10	46	445	785	1st	England	Rajkot	15 Feb 2024	Won by 434 runs

Thirteen of the fifteen came in Indian victories, which is less a statement about six-hitting than about the kind of innings that produces it: a side already on top, with runs on the board and a declaration in mind. The exceptions are the drawn Ahmedabad Test of March 2023 and Bengaluru in October 2024, where India followed 46 all out with 462 and still lost by eight wickets.

Rajkot, February 2024

The Rajkot Test is the only match in which India appear twice on this list. They made 445 in the first innings with ten sixes, then 430 for 4 with eighteen. Twenty-eight sixes in one match by one side is India's highest for a Test.

Jaiswal's second-innings 214 not out came off 236 balls, and it followed 209 in the previous Test at Visakhapatnam. He was 22. Sarfaraz Khan hit three sixes in his 68 and Shubman Gill two in his 91; the aggression was distributed, not isolated. England, chasing 557, were bowled out for 122.

Rajkot also holds the 2018 entry — 649 for 9 declared against the West Indies with eleven sixes, still India's highest total at the ground. The venue's own numbers are on the Niranjan Shah Stadium, Rajkot records page, and the two England series that bracket the list are on the India versus England Test record page.

Visakhapatnam 2019: the most sixes any Test has seen

The first Test of the 2019 series against South Africa produced 37 sixes in all, which was a record for a Test match when it was set. India hit 27 of them — thirteen in a first innings of 502 for 7, fourteen in a second innings of 323 for 4 — and South Africa the other ten.

Rohit Sharma, opening for the first time in Tests, hit six in his 176 and seven in his 127. Thirteen in a single Test is the most by any batter, going past Wasim Akram's twelve from that same 1996 innings. Mayank Agarwal hit six in his 215, so two India batters cleared the rope six times in the same innings.

What the raw count hides is the pitch. Visakhapatnam in October is slow and low, and the sixes were not free hits off a flat deck at pace but slog-swept and lofted off spin, mostly from the middle of the crease. India's home season of 2019 contributed four of the fifteen innings in this table — two at Visakhapatnam, one at Ranchi and one at Indore against Bangladesh. The South Africa series is set out on the India versus South Africa Test record page, with the ground detail on the ACA-VDCA Stadium records page.

Kanpur 2024: eleven sixes in 208 balls

The most extraordinary entry is not the biggest. At Green Park on 30 September 2024, after rain had allowed only 35 overs in the first three days, India declared on 285 for 9 in 34.4 overs. Eleven sixes and 28 fours in 208 balls: 178 of the 285 runs came in boundaries.

Rohit Sharma hit three sixes in a 23 off eleven balls, Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul two each, and Akash Deep two in a twelve off five. India's fifty came up in eighteen balls and their hundred in 10.1 overs, both the fastest by a team in Test cricket, and they won by seven wickets with the better part of a day unused. The ground's history, which includes almost the opposite kind of cricket, is on the Green Park, Kanpur records page.

The other end of the same story

India's largest total, 759 for 7 declared against England at Chennai in December 2016, contains ten sixes in 1,144 balls — one every 114. Rajkot's 430 for 4 contains eighteen in 588 — one every 33. Both are on this list; they are barely the same sport.

The 726 for 9 declared at the Brabourne Stadium in 2009, second on the list, sits between them: fifteen sixes and 76 fours, seven of the sixes from Virender Sehwag's 293 and six more from MS Dhoni's 100. That innings appears on the Brabourne Stadium records page too, for the more conventional reason that it is the highest total made there.

Three things the list shows

Sixes cluster in third innings. Five of the fifteen came in India's second bat of the match, including two of the top three. A team batting a second time with a lead does not need to accumulate; it needs to get to a declaration, and that is where the shot gets played.

The fours column moves independently. Rajkot's 430 for 4 has 35 fours; Chennai's 759 for 7 has seventy. There is no relationship between the two counts in this table, which is why the India Test most fours in an innings list contains a different set of innings almost entirely.

Nothing here predates 2009. India played Test cricket for 77 years before an innings of theirs contained fifteen sixes. Compare that with Twenty20, where India have cleared twenty sixes in an innings more than once, as the India T20I most sixes in an innings page records. The career lists on the India Test most sixes page show the same shift by player rather than by innings, and the longer arc of how India came to bat like this is on the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Team six counts per innings are computed from ball-by-ball records of India's Test matches, counting only deliveries scored as a boundary six and excluding all-run sixes. Individual six counts are taken from the same records and checked against the published scorecards; the match record of 37 sixes at Visakhapatnam and Rohit Sharma's thirteen in that match are as recorded by the ICC and in contemporary reports.

The table is limited to innings from December 2001 onwards, which is the period for which complete ball-by-ball data exists for India's Tests. Boundary-by-boundary counts for earlier innings are not consistently recorded, so older innings are left out rather than estimated. Given the rate at which sixes were hit before 2000 — India's biggest totals of the 1970s and 1980s were built almost entirely on placement — it is unlikely that a missing innings would reach ten, but the table does not claim to rule it out.

The cut-off is ten sixes, which gives fifteen innings. Balls faced counts legal deliveries only. Match margins are as recorded on the scorecards, with innings victories given in that form. Figures current to 21 August 2026.