IPL Highest Partnerships: All-Time Records
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in the Indian Premier League10 min read
Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers added 229 for the second wicket against Gujarat Lions at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on 14 May 2016. It took 96 balls, a rate of 14.31 an over, and it remains the largest partnership in the Indian Premier League. Kohli made 109 from 55 and de Villiers 129 from 51; Royal Challengers finished on 248 for 3 and won by 144 runs.
The same pair are responsible for the third-largest stand as well — 215 unbroken for the second wicket against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede on 10 May 2015, off 101 balls. Nobody else has two partnerships of 215 or more in the competition, and no other pair has more than three of 150 or more; Kohli and de Villiers have four.
Only eight partnerships in 1,243 Indian Premier League matches have reached 200. Forty-three have reached 150, and their distribution across the seasons is much flatter than the rise in team totals would suggest.
The twenty largest partnerships
| # | Runs | Balls | Wkt | Batters | Team | Opponent | City | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 229 | 96 | 2nd | Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Gujarat Lions | Bangalore | 14 May 2016 |
| 2 | 220 | 95 | 2nd | KL Rahul, Nitish Rana | Delhi Capitals | Punjab Kings | Delhi | 25 Apr 2026 |
| 3 | 215* | 101 | 2nd | Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Mumbai Indians | Mumbai | 10 May 2015 |
| 4 | 210* | 120 | 1st | Quinton de Kock, KL Rahul | Lucknow Super Giants | Kolkata Knight Riders | Navi Mumbai | 18 May 2022 |
| 5 | 210 | 104 | 1st | Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill | Gujarat Titans | Chennai Super Kings | Ahmedabad | 10 May 2024 |
| 6 | 206 | 96 | 2nd | Adam Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh | Kings XI Punjab | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Dharamsala | 17 May 2011 |
| 7 | 205* | 114 | 1st | Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill | Gujarat Titans | Delhi Capitals | Delhi | 18 May 2025 |
| 8 | 204* | 106 | 2nd | Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Delhi Daredevils | Delhi | 17 May 2012 |
| 9 | 189* | 98 | 2nd | David Warner, Naman Ojha | Delhi Daredevils | Deccan Chargers | Hyderabad | 10 May 2012 |
| 10 | 185 | 98 | 1st | David Warner, Jonny Bairstow | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Hyderabad | 31 Mar 2019 |
| 11 | 184* | 89 | 1st | Chris Lynn, Gautam Gambhir | Kolkata Knight Riders | Gujarat Lions | Rajkot | 7 Apr 2017 |
| 12 | 183 | 99 | 1st | KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal | Kings XI Punjab | Rajasthan Royals | Sharjah | 27 Sep 2020 |
| 13 | 182 | 107 | 1st | Devon Conway, Ruturaj Gaikwad | Chennai Super Kings | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Pune | 1 May 2022 |
| 14 | 182 | 80 | 2nd | Cooper Connolly, Priyansh Arya | Punjab Kings | Lucknow Super Giants | New Chandigarh | 19 Apr 2026 |
| 15 | 181* | 106 | 1st | Faf du Plessis, Shane Watson | Chennai Super Kings | Kings XI Punjab | Dubai | 4 Oct 2020 |
| 16 | 181* | 99 | 1st | Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kohli | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Rajasthan Royals | Mumbai | 22 Apr 2021 |
| 17 | 176* | 102 | 2nd | Kane Williamson, Shikhar Dhawan | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Delhi Daredevils | Delhi | 10 May 2018 |
| 18 | 172 | 107 | 1st | Faf du Plessis, Virat Kohli | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Hyderabad | 18 May 2023 |
| 19 | 171 | 74 | 1st | Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Punjab Kings | Hyderabad | 12 Apr 2025 |
| 20 | 167* | 106 | 2nd | Herschelle Gibbs, Rohit Sharma | Mumbai Indians | Kolkata Knight Riders | Kolkata | 12 May 2012 |
An asterisk marks a stand still unbroken when the innings ended.
Nineteen of the twenty came for the first or second wicket. That is the plainest fact on the page: a large IPL partnership is almost always a top-order one, because only the openers and the number three have enough deliveries left to build one.
The record for every wicket
| Wkt | Runs | Batters | Team | Opponent | City | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 210* | Quinton de Kock, KL Rahul | Lucknow Super Giants | Kolkata Knight Riders | Navi Mumbai | 18 May 2022 |
| 2nd | 229 | Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Gujarat Lions | Bangalore | 14 May 2016 |
| 3rd | 165 | Robin Uthappa, Shivam Dube | Chennai Super Kings | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Mumbai | 12 Apr 2022 |
| 4th | 144 | Gurkeerat Singh, Shimron Hetmyer | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Bengaluru | 4 May 2019 |
| 5th | 134* | Shakib Al Hasan, Yusuf Pathan | Kolkata Knight Riders | Gujarat Lions | Kolkata | 8 May 2016 |
| 6th | 122* | Ambati Rayudu, Kieron Pollard | Mumbai Indians | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Bangalore | 14 May 2012 |
| 7th | 100 | Harbhajan Singh, Jagadeesha Suchith | Mumbai Indians | Kings XI Punjab | Mumbai | 12 Apr 2015 |
| 8th | 73* | Ayush Badoni, Arshad Khan | Lucknow Super Giants | Delhi Capitals | Lucknow | 12 Apr 2024 |
| 9th | 88* | Alzarri Joseph, Rashid Khan | Gujarat Titans | Mumbai Indians | Mumbai | 12 May 2023 |
| 10th | 55* | Mohit Rathee, Shikhar Dhawan | Punjab Kings | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Hyderabad | 9 Apr 2023 |
The ninth-wicket record exceeds the eighth-wicket record, which is unusual and worth explaining. Alzarri Joseph and Rashid Khan added 88 not out from number nine and ten in the order at the Wankhede in May 2023, batting the last seven overs against an attack setting fields for a tail rather than for two hitters. Cases of that kind are rare enough that the eighth-wicket list has never produced anything comparable.
Below the seventh wicket the numbers fall away sharply — 100, 73, 88 and 55 across the last four — because a partnership at that depth only has overs when the top order has failed, and by then the required rate has usually removed any option but immediate risk.
The rates
Speed and size are not the same thing, and the ranked list conceals a spread of nearly seven runs an over.
| Rate | Runs | Balls | Batters | Team | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17.28 | 167* | 58 | Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head | Sunrisers Hyderabad | 8 May 2024 |
| 14.31 | 229 | 96 | Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers | Royal Challengers Bangalore | 14 May 2016 |
| 14.03 | 166 | 71 | Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Yashasvi Jaiswal | Rajasthan Royals | 28 Apr 2025 |
| 13.89 | 220 | 95 | KL Rahul, Nitish Rana | Delhi Capitals | 25 Apr 2026 |
| 13.86 | 171 | 74 | Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head | Sunrisers Hyderabad | 12 Apr 2025 |
| 13.82 | 152 | 66 | Albie Morkel, Murali Vijay | Chennai Super Kings | 3 Apr 2010 |
| 13.65 | 182 | 80 | Cooper Connolly, Priyansh Arya | Punjab Kings | 19 Apr 2026 |
| 10.50 | 210* | 120 | Quinton de Kock, KL Rahul | Lucknow Super Giants | 18 May 2022 |
The de Kock and Rahul stand at the bottom of that table is instructive. It is the fourth-largest partnership on record and by some distance the slowest of the group, because it lasted the entire innings: 210 for none in twenty overs, de Kock 140 not out and Rahul 68 not out. Lucknow won by two runs. A partnership that occupies every ball of an innings has a ceiling set by the format rather than by the batting.
At the other end, Head and Abhishek Sharma's 167 without loss in 58 balls is the fastest 150-plus stand the competition has produced by a margin of nearly three runs an over. Their pairing appears twice in the rate table — the 167 does not make the twenty largest, because it ended when the target was reached — and the Sunrisers Hyderabad hub covers the batting method behind both.
Which pairs recur
| Pair | Stands of 150+ |
|---|---|
| Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers | 4 |
| Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill | 3 |
| David Warner, Jonny Bairstow | 2 |
| Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head | 2 |
No other pair in nineteen seasons has managed two. Kohli's own total across all partners is eight stands of 150 or more, which is more than any other batter has been involved in, and the Royal Challengers hub covers a career spent almost entirely at the top of one batting order.
Sudharsan and Gill are the current version. Their three 150-plus stands include the 210 against Chennai at the Narendra Modi Stadium in May 2024 and the unbeaten 205 that won a match by ten wickets in Delhi in May 2025, and they are the only opening pair to have made two separate stands of 200 or more. The Gujarat Titans hub covers the club they open for.
No trend, despite the totals
| Period | Stands of 150+ | Seasons |
|---|---|---|
| 2008-2013 | 12 | 6 |
| 2014-2019 | 9 | 6 |
| 2020-2026 | 22 | 7 |
Twenty-two in seven seasons against twelve in the first six is an increase, but a modest one — roughly three a season against two — set against team totals that have risen far more sharply. The IPL highest team totals page records twenty-nine of the thirty-five largest innings coming since 2024.
The reason is that modern high totals are built from three or four scoring partnerships rather than one long one. A side that makes 250 today has usually lost four wickets doing it, because the batting is deep enough that losing a wicket costs nothing. The very large stand belongs to an older method: two batters going in early and staying.
Four points the tables do not carry:
- Every partnership above 200 has come at the first or second wicket, and no third-wicket stand has passed 165 in nineteen seasons.
- Royal Challengers appear in six of the top twenty, more than any other club, and five of those six involve Kohli.
- Both 2026 entries in the top twenty came in the same three weeks in April, one of them in the match where Delhi made 264 for 2 and still lost.
- The competition's largest partnership and its largest team total belong to different eras: the 229 comes from 2016, the record total from 2024.
Individual innings inside these stands are on the IPL highest individual scores page, the batting volume behind them on the IPL most runs page, and the cricket in India hub carries the domestic context.
Sources and method
Partnerships were reconstructed delivery by delivery from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball archive (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), covering all 1,243 IPL matches from 18 April 2008 to 31 May 2026. A partnership begins with the first ball after a dismissal and ends with the next dismissal or the end of the innings; its total is every run scored while both batters were at the crease, including extras, which is the standard scoring convention.
An asterisk marks a stand unbroken at the close of the innings. Balls faced are legal deliveries bowled during the partnership. A batter retiring hurt does not close a partnership in this reconstruction; a batter retired out does. No entry in the top twenty involves a retirement, so the choice does not affect the ranked list, but it would change a small number of figures further down and is stated here rather than left to be inferred.
Wicket numbers are the sequential position of the stand in the innings, so a stand that begins after the first dismissal is the second-wicket partnership regardless of where the batters were listed. Names are given in the form used at the time; club names follow the season. All figures close with the 2026 final.