IPL Most Dot Balls: All-Time Records

The dot ball is the unit of currency for a Twenty20 bowler. A four-over spell contains 24 of them at most, and the difference between a good spell and a bad one is often three or four deliveries from which nothing was scored. Bhuvneshwar Kumar has bowled 1,897 of them in the IPL, more than any other bowler, from 4,600 legal deliveries — a rate of 41.2 per cent that is unusually high for someone who has bowled that much.

The number behind the number is the percentage. Dale Steyn's dot-ball rate of 46.8 per cent across 362 overs is the highest of anyone with 250 overs in the competition, more than three points clear of the next man. That is a bowler from whom nearly one delivery in two produced nothing at all, in an era before the run rate reached nine.

All counts below come from the 1,243 Indian Premier League matches played between April 2008 and the 2026 final. A dot ball is a delivery from which no run is scored, by the bat or by any other means — a wide, being a run conceded, is not a dot.

Most IPL dot balls

#	Bowler	Dot balls	Legal deliveries	Dot %	Wickets	Economy
1	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	1,897	4,600	41.2	226	7.71
2	Sunil Narine	1,784	4,651	38.4	207	6.79
3	Ravichandran Ashwin	1,606	4,710	34.1	187	7.20
4	Jasprit Bumrah	1,452	3,631	40.0	187	7.34
5	Ravindra Jadeja	1,342	4,254	31.5	180	7.71
6	Piyush Chawla	1,325	3,850	34.4	192	7.96
7	Yuzvendra Chahal	1,319	4,037	32.7	233	8.05
8	Harbhajan Singh	1,263	3,416	37.0	150	7.08
9	Rashid Khan	1,254	3,530	35.5	179	7.28
10	Sandeep Sharma	1,205	3,159	38.1	151	8.16
11	Amit Mishra	1,185	3,371	35.2	174	7.38
12	Umesh Yadav	1,185	3,050	38.9	144	8.49
13	Axar Patel	1,165	3,579	32.6	139	7.43
14	Mohammed Shami	1,164	2,912	40.0	145	8.67
15	Lasith Malinga	1,144	2,827	40.5	170	7.14
16	Trent Boult	1,135	2,780	40.8	145	8.49
17	Mohammed Siraj	1,111	2,672	41.6	128	8.78
18	Praveen Kumar	1,075	2,524	42.6	90	7.73
19	Dale Steyn	1,019	2,176	46.8	97	6.92
20	Ishant Sharma	999	2,419	41.3	96	8.38
21	Dwayne Bravo	998	3,120	32.0	183	8.38
22	Kagiso Rabada	902	2,290	39.4	148	8.80

Highest dot-ball percentage, min 250 overs

#	Bowler	Dot %	Dot balls	Overs	Economy
1	Dale Steyn	46.8	1,019	362.4	6.92
2	Morne Morkel	43.5	708	271.3	7.69
3	Jofra Archer	42.9	677	263.0	8.22
4	Praveen Kumar	42.6	1,075	420.4	7.73
5	Deepak Chahar	42.1	871	344.4	8.30
6	RP Singh	41.9	744	295.5	7.90
7	Ashish Nehra	41.8	798	318.0	7.85
8	Mohammed Siraj	41.6	1,111	445.2	8.78
9	Dhawal Kulkarni	41.5	742	297.5	8.31
10	Ashok Dinda	41.4	627	252.4	8.20
11	Ishant Sharma	41.3	999	403.1	8.38
12	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	41.2	1,897	766.4	7.71
13	Khaleel Ahmed	41.2	683	276.1	8.96
14	Irfan Pathan	40.9	835	340.3	7.78
15	Trent Boult	40.8	1,135	463.2	8.49
16	Lasith Malinga	40.5	1,144	471.1	7.14
17	Jasprit Bumrah	40.0	1,452	605.1	7.34
18	Mohammed Shami	40.0	1,164	485.2	8.67

Every name in the top eleven is a seamer, and most of them are new-ball seamers. That is the central fact about dot balls in this format: the first six overs, with a hard ball, five men in the circle and batters who have not yet got their eye in, produce far more of them than the middle or the death.

Why spinners are lower and cheaper

The comparison that matters is Sunil Narine against Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Bhuvneshwar has bowled 1,897 dots at 41.2 per cent and concedes 7.71 an over. Narine has bowled 1,784 at 38.4 per cent and concedes 6.79. Fewer dots, cheaper bowling.

The reason is the distribution of what happens on the other deliveries. A quick bowler's non-dot balls include a high share of boundaries; a spinner bowling into the pitch to a spread field concedes singles and twos instead. Ravindra Jadeja's 31.5 per cent is the lowest dot rate in the top twenty and his economy rate of 7.71 is identical to Bhuvneshwar's, achieved by an almost completely opposite method — 4,254 deliveries, 1,342 dots, and a great many ones.

Sunil Narine is the extreme version: the best economy rate in IPL history at 6.79 with a dot rate that would not make the top twenty-five. He was not unplayable; he was unhittable.

The dot ball has not gone away

Season	Leading dot-ball total	Bowler	Competition run rate
2011	183	Lasith Malinga	7.69
2013	211	Dale Steyn	7.65
2016	156	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	8.28
2019	186	Deepak Chahar	8.38
2020	171	Jofra Archer	8.26
2022	193	Prasidh Krishna	8.50
2023	184	Mohammed Shami	8.94
2024	144	Jasprit Bumrah	9.52
2025	141	Mohammed Siraj	9.59
2026	167	Kagiso Rabada	9.85

This is the most instructive table on the page. The leading dot-ball total in a season has fluctuated between roughly 140 and 210 for fifteen years while the competition's run rate rose from 7.65 to 9.85. Bowlers are still generating dots at broadly the same rate. What has changed is the cost of the deliveries that are not dots.

Two things follow. First, an economy rate is not a measure of a bowler's dot-taking ability, which is why the two tables above give different orders. Second, the strategic value of a dot has risen: when the required rate is eleven rather than eight, a single scoreless delivery moves the match further.

Dots by phase

Across the whole history of the competition, 46.3 per cent of powerplay deliveries have been dots, against 31.8 per cent in the middle overs and 28.4 per cent at the death. A bowler's career dot percentage is therefore partly a statement about when his captain used him.

Season	Powerplay dot %	Middle overs	Death overs
2008	49.7	33.9	29.1
2013	50.7	34.1	30.2
2018	43.9	30.9	28.4
2023	43.9	30.0	28.5
2026	41.4	28.4	29.1

The powerplay has lost nine percentage points of dots since 2013 and the middle overs six, while the death overs have not moved at all. That is the clearest available evidence that the scoring inflation of the last decade is a front-half phenomenon: batters have stopped respecting the new ball, and nobody has found a new way to score at the death.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled 2,543 of his deliveries in the first six overs and took 97 powerplay wickets, the most by anyone — which explains both his dot total and his rate. Dwayne Bravo, at the other end of the table with 32.0 per cent, bowled almost entirely in overs sixteen to twenty and took 115 death wickets. Both were doing their jobs well; only one of them was in a position to accumulate dots.

The phase breakdown is set out on the powerplay wicket records and the death-overs wicket records. The rarest outcome of all — six dots in a row — is on the most maiden overs records.

What a dot ball is worth

Six dots in an over is a maiden, and there have been only 288 in nineteen seasons. Three or four in an over is routine and is the actual difference between a spell that costs six and one that costs twelve. Nothing on this page identifies the best bowlers in IPL history — the best bowling average records and best economy rate records do that better — but it does identify which of them made batters play a dead ball most often, and that is a distinct skill.

Franchise context is on the IPL hub and at Sunrisers Hyderabad, where Bhuvneshwar bowled the bulk of his career; the wider domestic picture is in the guide to cricket in India.

Sources and method

A dot ball is defined here as any delivery from which no run accrues to the batting side. That means byes, leg byes, wides and no-balls all disqualify a delivery from counting as a dot, since each concedes at least one run. Dot-ball percentage is dots divided by legal deliveries bowled — wides and no-balls excluded from the denominator, which is the conventional basis for a bowler's over count.

All figures are computed from the ball-by-ball archive published by Cricsheet (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0) covering every IPL match from 18 April 2008 to 31 May 2026. Overs are given in cricket notation, so 766.4 is 766 overs and four balls.

The 250-over qualification on the percentage table is our own bar and is stated because a percentage table without one is dominated by bowlers with a handful of matches. Season leaders in the dot-ball table are the highest individual totals in that season, computed on the same basis. Competition run rates are all runs, extras included, divided by overs bowled that season.

Phase figures quoted in the prose use overs one to six for the powerplay and sixteen to twenty for the death. The maiden-over count of 288 is a complete count from the same archive.