India Women Most Five-Wicket Hauls: International Records

Thirty-nine times in fifty years an India woman has taken five wickets in an international innings. Seventeen of those came in Tests, seventeen in one-day internationals and five in Twenty20 internationals, from 43, 345 and 225 matches respectively — which tells you immediately that the Test five-for is not a rare event and the Twenty20 one is close to a freak.

Deepti Sharma has seven, more than anyone: one in Tests, four in one-day internationals, two in Twenty20 internationals. Jhulan Goswami has six across the same three formats. Shubhangi Kulkarni has five and all of them are in Tests, which no other India woman has managed more than three of.

Below those three the list flattens out fast. Eighteen bowlers appear on this page and ten of them took exactly one, while seven of the 39 hauls have been taken since the start of 2024.

The all-format five-wicket haul count

Player	Span	Test	ODI	T20I	Total
Deepti Sharma	2014-2026	1	4	2	7
Jhulan Goswami	2002-2022	3	2	1	6
Shubhangi Kulkarni	1976-1991	5	0	0	5
Neetu David	1995-2008	1	2	0	3
Ekta Bisht	2011-2022	0	2	0	2
Sneh Rana	2014-2026	1	1	0	2
Kranti Gaud	2025-2026	1	1	0	2
Renuka Singh	2021-2026	0	1	1	2

Ten more bowlers have one each: Gargi Banerji, S Chakraborty, Diana Edulji, Harmanpreet Kaur, Purnima Rau, Nooshin Al Khadeer, P Choudhary, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Mamatha Maben and Priyanka Roy.

Kranti Gaud's two are the fastest pair on the list. She took 6 for 52 against England at Chester-le-Street in July 2025 and 5 for 37 against England at Lord's twelve months after that — two hauls in successive English summers, in two different formats, within thirteen months of first playing for India.

Shubhangi Kulkarni's five is the harder number to place. She played nineteen Tests and 27 one-day internationals between 1976 and 1991, and every one of her five-wicket returns came in the long format, at a career Test average of 27.45. Two of the five were 6 for 99, one at Perth in January 1977 and one at Ahmedabad eight years later.

Seventeen in Tests, and five belong to one bowler

Player	Span	Mat	Wkts	5w	10w	BBI	BBM	Ave
Shubhangi Kulkarni	1976-1991	19	60	5	0	6/99	7/57	27.45
Jhulan Goswami	2002-2021	12	44	3	1	5/25	10/78	17.36
Gargi Banerji	1984-1991	12	8	1	0	6/9	6/32	17.12
S Chakraborty	1976-1984	11	19	1	0	5/25	7/70	22.10
Neetu David	1995-2006	10	41	1	0	8/53	9/90	18.90
Diana Edulji	1976-1991	20	63	1	0	6/64	6/64	25.77
Kranti Gaud	2026	2	9	1	0	5/37	7/91	18.11
Harmanpreet Kaur	2014-2026	8	12	1	0	5/44	9/85	15.41
Sneh Rana	2021-2026	6	30	1	1	8/77	10/188	20.96
Purnima Rau	1995-1999	5	15	1	0	5/24	7/98	21.26
Deepti Sharma	2021-2026	7	25	1	0	5/7	9/39	19.00

Eleven bowlers have taken a five-wicket haul in a women's Test for India, and one of the eleven took eight Test wickets in her whole career. Gargi Banerji's 6 for 9 against New Zealand at Cuttack in March 1985 accounts for six of those eight; she has a better Test bowling average than Diana Edulji, who took 63.

Diana Edulji's single haul across twenty Tests is the reverse case. She bowled more than 5,000 balls in Test cricket for India — more than any other woman — and reached five in an innings once, the 6 for 64 against Australia at Delhi in January 1984 which is also her best match figure, because she took none in the other innings.

Harmanpreet Kaur is on this list. Her 5 for 44, part of a 9 for 85 against South Africa at Mysore in November 2014, is one of only two five-wicket hauls by an India woman picked primarily as a batter — the other is Banerji's 6 for 9.

Seventeen in one-day internationals

Player	Span	Mat	Wkts	4w	5w	BBI	Ave
Deepti Sharma	2014-2026	124	166	3	4	6/20	27.69
Ekta Bisht	2011-2022	63	98	1	2	5/8	21.83
Neetu David	1995-2008	97	141	4	2	5/20	16.34
Jhulan Goswami	2002-2022	204	255	7	2	6/31	22.04
Nooshin Al Khadeer	2002-2012	78	100	4	1	5/14	24.02
P Choudhary	1997-1997	5	6	0	1	5/21	10.66
Rajeshwari Gayakwad	2014-2022	64	99	5	1	5/15	20.79
Kranti Gaud	2025-2026	17	25	0	1	6/52	29.76
Mamatha Maben	1993-2004	40	21	1	1	6/10	12.14
Sneh Rana	2014-2026	45	59	2	1	5/43	31.30
Renuka Singh	2022-2026	29	42	4	1	5/29	27.57

Deepti Sharma's four is a clear lead and an odd one: she has fewer four-wicket hauls than five-wicket hauls, which is true of nobody else on the list and of very few bowlers anywhere. Three of her four are identifiable in the ranked innings list: 6 for 20 against Sri Lanka at Ranchi in February 2016, which is her best, 5 for 38 against Australia at the Wankhede in December 2023, and 6 for 31 against West Indies at Vadodara a year later.

P Choudhary's row is the shortest career in India's women's international records to include a five-wicket haul: five one-day internationals in 1997, six wickets, 5 for 21 against West Indies at Faridabad in one of them. Mamatha Maben's is nearly as compressed — 21 wickets in 40 matches, and 6 for 10 at Kandy in 2004 the best figures any India woman has produced in the format.

Jhulan Goswami has seven four-wicket hauls, more than anyone, and only two five-wicket returns from 204 matches. That ratio is the shape of her career: relentless rather than explosive.

Five in Twenty20 internationals

Figures	Player	Overs	Opponent	Venue	Date
5/10	Deepti Sharma	4.0	Pakistan	Birmingham	14 Jun 2026
5/11	Jhulan Goswami	3.5	Australia	Visakhapatnam	23 Mar 2012
5/15	Renuka Singh	4.0	England	Gqeberha	18 Feb 2023
5/16	Priyanka Roy	3.5	Pakistan	Taunton	13 Jun 2009
5/19	Deepti Sharma	4.0	South Africa	Johannesburg	25 Apr 2026

Five hauls in 225 matches, which is one every 45 games. Two of the five came within seven weeks of each other in 2026, both by Deepti Sharma, and two of the five were against Pakistan seventeen years apart.

The four-over limit is the whole explanation. A bowler needs five of the ten wickets available inside 24 balls, and the three most prolific Twenty20 wicket-takers in India's women's history between them — Deepti Sharma, Radha Yadav and Poonam Yadav — have two five-wicket hauls, all Deepti's. Radha Yadav has 106 wickets and has never taken more than four in an innings; Poonam Yadav has 98 and the same.

Ten wickets in a Test: twice in fifty years

Figures	Player	Innings splits	Opponent	Venue	Date
10/78	Jhulan Goswami	included 5/33	England	Taunton	29 Aug 2006
10/188	Sneh Rana	included 8/77	South Africa	Chennai	28 Jun 2024

Goswami's is the cheaper of the two and came in the Test India won at Taunton, their first Test victory in England. Rana's includes the second-best innings return by an India woman and came in a match India won by ten wickets.

Ten other match returns have reached seven wickets or more without reaching ten, and the full ranked list of them is on the India women best bowling figures page. Shubhangi Kulkarni, with five five-wicket hauls, never took ten in a match — her best is 7 for 57.

Four-wicket hauls, and why they matter here

Player	Format	4w	5w	4w or better
Jhulan Goswami	ODI	7	2	9
Rajeshwari Gayakwad	ODI	5	1	6
Neetu David	ODI	4	2	6
Deepti Sharma	ODI	3	4	7
Nooshin Al Khadeer	ODI	4	1	5
Renuka Singh	ODI	4	1	5
Poonam Yadav	T20I	3	0	3
Renuka Singh	T20I	3	1	4
Deepti Sharma	T20I	1	2	3
Shree Charani	T20I	2	0	2
Radha Yadav	T20I	2	0	2

Counted as four wickets or better, Goswami's nine one-day hauls lead everything and Deepti Sharma's seven follow. Renuka Singh has nine across the two white-ball formats from 94 matches, which is the highest rate of anyone in the table.

The four-wicket column also rescues Poonam Yadav and Radha Yadav, who between them have 204 Twenty20 wickets and one five-wicket haul. Judging spinners in that format on five-wicket returns alone misses most of what they did, and the career averages that measure it better are on the India women best bowling averages page.

What 39 hauls in fifty years tells you

It tells you first that India women's Test cricket, for all that there has been so little of it, has been the most productive format for individual bowling performances. Seventeen five-wicket hauls from 43 matches is one every 2.5 Tests. In one-day internationals it is one every 20 matches, and in Twenty20 internationals one every 45.

It tells you second that the recent volume of cricket is starting to show. Seven of the 39 have come since January 2024 — Sneh Rana, Deepti Sharma twice in Tests and Twenty20s, Kranti Gaud twice, Renuka Singh, and the rest — which is more than any two-year period in the previous half-century produced.

And it tells you third that the honours are shared more widely than the wicket aggregates suggest. Eighteen different bowlers appear on this page. The India women most wickets list has six players past 150 international wickets, and one of them, Poonam Yadav, has taken 181 of them without ever reaching five in an innings.

The batting that these bowlers dismissed is catalogued on the India women most centuries page, the fielding behind them on the India women most catches page. For how India came to develop this many spinners, the spin bowling tradition page and the India women's cricket history page cover the pathway, and the cricket in India hub covers everything else.

Sources and method

Five-wicket and four-wicket haul counts, wickets, averages, best innings figures and best match figures come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru career bowling records for India Women in women's Tests, women's one-day internationals and women's Twenty20 internationals, read on 27 August 2026. The Twenty20 innings table comes from the ranked innings list for that class.

The totals of seventeen, seventeen and five hauls are computed by adding the five-wicket columns of the complete qualified lists in each format, and the all-format table by adding each player's three format figures. Statsguru publishes no combined women's international class, so every cross-format number on this page is my arithmetic on its published columns.

The rate figures — one haul every 2.5 Tests, every 20 one-day internationals, every 45 Twenty20 internationals — divide the haul count by India Women's total matches in each format to August 2026: 43, 345 and 225. Those match totals come from the same source's team records.

The "four wickets or better" column adds the 4w and 5w columns, which is not a published field but is the natural way to compare a Twenty20 spinner with a Test seamer. Note that a bowler's 4w column counts innings of exactly four wickets, so adding the two columns does not double-count anything.

Bowlers are named as the records name them, with initials kept where a full name could not be confirmed. Records of this kind change with every series, and nothing here has been estimated.