WPL Most Wickets: All-Time Records

Amelia Kerr has taken 54 wickets in the Women's Premier League, more than anyone else and eight clear of the next bowler. She has played all 36 of Mumbai Indians' matches across the competition's four seasons, and her leg spin has taken a wicket every 10.3 balls at an average of 17.1.

The list behind her is dominated by spin and by all-rounders. Of the top six, four bowl spin — Kerr, Hayley Matthews, Sophie Ecclestone and Deepti Sharma — and four bat in the top seven for their franchises. The competition's twenty-over format on Indian surfaces in February and March has rewarded a bowler who can turn the ball and bat at six, and every squad has been built around finding two or three of them.

The one seam bowler high on the list is Marizanne Kapp, whose 38 wickets have come at an economy of 6.05 — the most economical return of anyone with more than twenty wickets, and by a clear margin.

The all-time leaderboard

Figures cover every WPL match played, from March 2023 to the 2026 final at Vadodara on 5 February 2026.

#	Bowler	Matches	Wickets	Best	Average	Economy
1	Amelia Kerr	36	54	5/38	17.1	7.61
2	Hayley Matthews	34	46	3/5	18.8	7.61
3	Sophie Ecclestone	33	43	4/13	20.4	6.85
4	Nat Sciver-Brunt	36	40	3/18	24.0	8.07
5	Marizanne Kapp	34	38	5/15	21.2	6.05
6	Shikha Pandey	35	37	3/23	25.3	7.20
7	Deepti Sharma	33	34	4/19	29.7	8.40
8	Jess Jonassen	24	33	4/31	20.8	7.74
9	Ashleigh Gardner	34	31	3/31	30.0	8.74
10	Sneha Rana	24	30	5/23	20.8	8.73
11	Georgia Wareham	28	27	3/21	26.6	8.76
12	Shabnim Ismail	27	26	3/18	27.3	6.66
13	Sophie Devine	23	26	4/37	20.8	8.33
14	Saika Ishaque	23	25	4/11	21.2	7.70

Wickets are bowlers' wickets and exclude run-outs. Averages and economy rates in the table count runs conceded off the bat plus wides and no-balls, and exclude byes and leg byes, which are not charged to the bowler.

The three five-wicket hauls

Only three bowlers have taken five in an innings in the competition: Amelia Kerr with 5 for 38, Marizanne Kapp with 5 for 15 and Sneha Rana with 5 for 23.

Kapp's is the best of the three on any measure — five wickets for fifteen runs in a twenty-over match is a return that essentially decides it. She bowls at the top and again at the death, which is an unusual workload to combine with an economy rate of 6.05 across four seasons.

Kerr's 5 for 38 came with a considerably higher cost, which is the difference between a leg spinner bowling through the middle overs on a good surface and a seamer with the new ball. Rana's 5 for 23 is the only one of the three by an Indian bowler.

Four-wicket hauls have been more common: Ecclestone's 4 for 13, Saika Ishaque's 4 for 11, Jess Jonassen's 4 for 31 and Deepti Sharma's 4 for 19 are the best of them. Ishaque's is the most economical four-wicket return in the competition.

Economy: Kapp and Ecclestone

Two bowlers have gone at under seven an over across four seasons, and it is worth saying how hard that is in a tournament where the average first-innings total sits around 160.

Marizanne Kapp has conceded 804 runs across 34 matches, an economy of 6.05. Sophie Ecclestone has conceded 877 across 33, at 6.85. Shabnim Ismail is close behind at 6.66 from 27 matches, and Shikha Pandey at 7.20 from 35.

That group has one thing in common — they are all first-choice international bowlers who bowl their four overs in the phases where runs are hardest to stop. Kapp and Ismail take the new ball, Ecclestone bowls through the middle to right-handers who cannot get down the pitch to her, and Pandey has bowled a heavy proportion of her overs at the death.

The comparison that makes the point is with the bowlers just below them on the wicket list, several of whom go at above 8.40. Wickets and economy are not the same skill in this competition, and a side's best wicket-taker is often not its most restrictive bowler.

Indian bowlers

Four Indians are in the top fourteen: Shikha Pandey, Deepti Sharma, Sneha Rana and Saika Ishaque, with Rajeshwari Gayakwad and Tanuja Kanwar just outside on 24 and 23.

Shikha Pandey's 37 wickets at 7.20 is the strongest of those returns taken as a whole. Saika Ishaque's 25 from 23 matches came almost entirely in the first two seasons, when her left-arm spin was central to Mumbai's title in 2023; her 4 for 11 remains one of the best analyses in the competition.

Deepti Sharma has taken 34 but at an economy of 8.40, higher than any of the other Indians on the list. She has bowled a large share of her overs in the last five, which is where the economy goes, and she is also the leading wicket-taker in women's Twenty20 international cricket — the two roles are not the same, and the WPL figure should not be read as a verdict on the bowler.

Why the list looks like this

Twenty-two matches a season for four seasons gives a maximum of about forty appearances, so the aggregate list is still short and heavily weighted towards availability. Kerr and Sciver-Brunt have played all 36 of their side's matches; Jonassen has played 24 and would rank considerably higher on a per-match measure, with 33 wickets from those 24.

The other structural factor is the overseas cap. Each side may field a limited number of overseas players, so an international bowler competing for one of those slots plays every match she is fit for, while Indian bowlers rotate more. That is why the top of this list is largely overseas and the middle is largely Indian.

For the batting equivalent see the WPL most runs leaderboard, and for team records the WPL highest team totals and WPL highest successful chases lists. The competition's franchises, auction and calendar are covered on the women's Premier League guide, and the international careers of the Indian bowlers here on the India women's most wickets and India women's best bowling figures leaderboards. The wider game is on the cricket in India hub, with the domestic history in the India women's cricket history guide.

What a wicket costs by phase

The gap between the economy rates at the top of this list and those in the middle is not mainly a gap in skill. It is a gap in when the overs are bowled.

A bowler who opens gets two overs with a hard ball, fielding restrictions that also protect her — the batter has to hit over an infield rather than through a spread one — and a batting side that is usually still setting up. A bowler who is held back to the seventeenth over is bowling to a set batter with all ten fielders spread and nothing to lose. Across four seasons the difference between those two jobs is worth well over two runs an over.

That is why Deepti Sharma at 8.40 and Marizanne Kapp at 6.05 are not two and a bit runs apart in quality. It is also why the wicket column and the economy column produce different orderings, and why a franchise picking a squad reads both.

The one bowler who genuinely escapes the trade-off is Sophie Ecclestone, who bowls the middle overs — the phase where wickets are cheapest to buy and runs are still relatively easy to stop — and has 43 at 6.85. Amelia Kerr does the same job for Mumbai and has more wickets at a run more per over.

What the four seasons have changed

Eighty-eight matches is not a long history, and the bowling that has succeeded in it has already shifted. The first season rewarded left-arm spin heavily — Saika Ishaque's 25 wickets came largely then — and the sides that won were the ones with two spinners who could bowl in the powerplay.

By 2026 the batting had adjusted. Totals above 200 became routine rather than exceptional, the highest successful chase in the competition arrived in the final, and the bowlers holding their economy under seven were doing it with pace variation and a hard length rather than with turn alone. Kapp and Ismail belong to that group; so does the fourth season's crop of Indian seamers, none of whom has yet played enough matches to reach this list.

The competition is also short enough that a single strong season moves a bowler several places. Jess Jonassen's 33 wickets from 24 matches would put her second on a per-match basis, and she has played two-thirds as many games as Kerr.

Sources and method

Every figure is computed from the complete ball-by-ball record of all 88 Women's Premier League matches played across the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 seasons. Nothing is taken from a summary table.

Wickets exclude run-outs, retired hurt, retired out and obstructing the field, none of which are credited to a bowler. Runs conceded include wides and no-balls but exclude byes and leg byes. Economy is runs conceded per six legal deliveries; average is runs conceded per wicket taken. Balls bowled exclude wides and no-balls, which is the standard basis for a strike rate.

Best innings figures are the best single-match return for that bowler, ranked on wickets first and runs conceded second. Records are complete to the 2026 final on 5 February 2026.