IPL Most Fifties: All-Time Records

Virat Kohli has made sixty-eight scores between fifty and ninety-nine in the Indian Premier League, and seventy-seven of fifty or more once his hundreds are added. David Warner is second on sixty-two fifties from a hundred fewer innings, and Shikhar Dhawan third on fifty-one. Nobody else has reached fifty.

The fifty is the milestone that actually describes Twenty20 batting. There have been 2,115 scores of fifty or more in the competition against 125 hundreds, which makes it seventeen times more common, and a fifty in this format usually means what a hundred means in a fifty-over match: the batter did the job the innings needed. The interesting column below is therefore not the count but the rate — innings per fifty — because that is what separates a good batter from one who simply played for fourteen years.

Every figure is computed from ball-by-ball records of all 1,243 Indian Premier League matches from April 2008 to the 2026 final.

Career fifty-plus scores

#	Player	50+	50	100	Inns	Runs	Inns per 50+
1	Virat Kohli	77	68	9	275	9,336	3.6
2	David Warner	66	62	4	184	6,565	2.8
3	Shikhar Dhawan	53	51	2	221	6,769	4.2
4	Rohit Sharma	51	49	2	275	7,329	5.4
4	KL Rahul	51	45	6	149	5,815	2.9
6	AB de Villiers	43	40	3	170	5,162	4.0
7	Suresh Raina	40	39	1	200	5,528	5.0
8	Faf du Plessis	39	39	0	147	4,773	3.8
9	Chris Gayle	37	31	6	141	4,965	3.8
9	Ajinkya Rahane	37	35	2	197	5,367	5.3
9	Shubman Gill	37	32	5	130	4,598	3.5
12	Gautam Gambhir	36	36	0	151	4,217	4.2
13	Jos Buttler	35	28	7	136	4,646	3.9
14	Suryakumar Yadav	33	31	2	164	4,581	5.0
14	Shreyas Iyer	33	32	1	144	4,229	4.4
16	Sanju Samson	32	27	5	185	5,181	5.8
17	Robin Uthappa	27	27	0	197	4,952	7.3
17	Quinton de Kock	27	24	3	118	3,441	4.4
19	Shane Watson	25	21	4	141	3,874	5.6
20	MS Dhoni	24	24	0	241	5,439	10.0
20	Ishan Kishan	24	23	1	127	3,600	5.3
20	Ruturaj Gaikwad	24	22	2	84	2,839	3.5
23	Ambati Rayudu	23	22	1	185	4,348	8.0
23	Manish Pandey	23	22	1	163	4,012	7.1
23	B Sai Sudharsan	23	20	3	57	2,515	2.5
26	Nitish Rana	22	22	0	121	3,078	5.5
26	Dinesh Karthik	22	22	0	233	4,842	10.6
26	Rishabh Pant	22	20	2	136	3,865	6.2

Three players inside the top twenty have never reached a hundred: Faf du Plessis on thirty-nine fifties, Gautam Gambhir on thirty-six and Robin Uthappa on twenty-seven from 197 innings. Du Plessis's thirty-nine is the largest fifty count in the competition's history by a batter with no century.

The rate that matters

Player	Inns	50+	Inns per 50+
B Sai Sudharsan	57	23	2.5
David Warner	184	66	2.8
KL Rahul	149	51	2.9
Shubman Gill	130	37	3.5
Ruturaj Gaikwad	84	24	3.5
Virat Kohli	275	77	3.6
Faf du Plessis	147	39	3.8
Chris Gayle	141	37	3.8
Jos Buttler	136	35	3.9
AB de Villiers	170	43	4.0
Gautam Gambhir	151	36	4.2
Shikhar Dhawan	221	53	4.2
Rohit Sharma	275	51	5.4
MS Dhoni	241	24	10.0
Dinesh Karthik	233	22	10.6

Sai Sudharsan passed fifty once every two and a half innings across his first five seasons, which is the best rate anyone has managed over more than fifty innings. Warner's 2.8 across 184 is the most impressive figure on the table for volume: he reached fifty in more than a third of every IPL innings he played, for fifteen years.

At the other end, Dhoni and Karthik needed ten and eleven innings each. Both were middle-order finishers for most of their careers and both scored more than 4,800 runs, which is the clearest illustration on this page that a fifty count measures opportunity as much as anything else.

Rohit Sharma is the anomaly. He batted 275 innings, exactly as many as Kohli, and reached fifty fifty-one times against Kohli's seventy-seven — a gap of twenty-six milestones from an identical number of chances.

Most fifty-plus scores in a season

#	Season	Player	Team	Inns	50+	50	100	Runs
1	2016	Virat Kohli	Royal Challengers Bangalore	16	11	7	4	973
2	2016	David Warner	Sunrisers Hyderabad	17	9	9	0	848
3	2026	B Sai Sudharsan	Gujarat Titans	17	9	8	1	722
4	2019	David Warner	Sunrisers Hyderabad	12	9	8	1	692
5	2022	Jos Buttler	Rajasthan Royals	17	8	4	4	863
6	2018	Kane Williamson	Sunrisers Hyderabad	17	8	8	0	735
7	2012	Chris Gayle	Royal Challengers Bangalore	14	8	7	1	733
8	2023	Faf du Plessis	Royal Challengers Bangalore	14	8	8	0	730
9	2025	Virat Kohli	Royal Challengers Bengaluru	15	8	8	0	657
10	2023	Virat Kohli	Royal Challengers Bangalore	14	8	6	2	639
11	2023	Shubman Gill	Gujarat Titans	17	7	4	3	890
12	2025	B Sai Sudharsan	Gujarat Titans	15	7	6	1	759
13	2026	Shubman Gill	Gujarat Titans	16	7	6	1	732
14	2016	AB de Villiers	Royal Challengers Bangalore	16	7	6	1	687

Kohli's eleven fifty-plus scores in sixteen innings in 2016 is the highest figure anyone has recorded in a season, and Warner's nine in twelve innings in 2019 the best rate. Kohli appears three times in fourteen rows, Warner and Sudharsan and Gill twice each.

The most striking entry is Williamson's 2018: eight fifties in seventeen innings and not a single hundred, a season of 735 runs made entirely in fifties and starts. Du Plessis's 2023 was almost identical — 730 runs, eight fifties, no hundred.

The fastest fifties

Balls	Player	Score	Team	Opponent	Venue	Date
13	Yashasvi Jaiswal	98 (47)	Rajasthan Royals	Kolkata Knight Riders	Kolkata	11 May 2023
13	Urvil Patel	65 (23)	Chennai Super Kings	Lucknow Super Giants	Chennai	10 May 2026
14	KL Rahul	51 (16)	Kings XI Punjab	Delhi Daredevils	Chandigarh	8 Apr 2018
14	Pat Cummins	56 (15)	Kolkata Knight Riders	Mumbai Indians	Pune	6 Apr 2022
14	Romario Shepherd	53 (14)	Royal Challengers Bengaluru	Chennai Super Kings	Bengaluru	3 May 2025
15	Sunil Narine	54 (17)	Kolkata Knight Riders	Royal Challengers Bangalore	Bangalore	7 May 2017
15	Nicholas Pooran	62 (19)	Lucknow Super Giants	Royal Challengers Bangalore	Bengaluru	10 Apr 2023
15	Jake Fraser-McGurk	65 (18)	Delhi Capitals	Sunrisers Hyderabad	Delhi	20 Apr 2024
15	Jake Fraser-McGurk	84 (27)	Delhi Capitals	Mumbai Indians	Delhi	27 Apr 2024
15	Vaibhav Suryavanshi	52 (17)	Rajasthan Royals	Chennai Super Kings	Guwahati	30 Mar 2026
15	Vaibhav Suryavanshi	78 (26)	Rajasthan Royals	Royal Challengers Bengaluru	Guwahati	10 Apr 2026
15	Yusuf Pathan	72 (22)	Kolkata Knight Riders	Sunrisers Hyderabad	Kolkata	24 May 2014

Two thirteen-ball fifties share the record, thirteen years apart in the same competition. Jaiswal's came opening at Eden Gardens in 2023; Urvil Patel's came in 2026 batting for Chennai. Pat Cummins and Sunil Narine are the only frontline bowlers on the list, and Cummins's 56 from fifteen balls at Pune in 2022 is the only entry by a specialist fast bowler.

Suryavanshi and Fraser-McGurk appear twice each. Nine of the twelve came in 2022 or later, which mirrors what the IPL best batting strike rates page shows about the tournament's scoring generally.

Fifty-plus scores by season

Season	Fifty-plus scores	Innings	Share of innings
2008	89	116	77%
2009	70	114	61%
2013	101	152	66%
2016	117	120	98%
2019	112	120	93%
2022	118	148	80%
2023	153	147	104%
2024	142	142	100%
2025	154	146	105%
2026	169	147	115%

The share column compares fifty-plus scores with team innings, so 115 per cent means that in 2026 there were more individual fifties than there were team innings — an average of more than one per side per innings. In 2009 there was one for every 1.6 innings.

2026's 169 is the highest total, but 2016's 117 from only 120 innings is the highest rate before the recent expansion of the fixture list. The lowest is 2009's 70 from 114, made in South African conditions the competition has never returned to.

Three things the fifty list shows

Warner is the most consistent batter the competition has had. Sixty-six fifty-plus scores in 184 innings, at one every 2.8 innings, with an average above 40 and a strike rate near 140. Nobody with more than 150 innings matches all four of those figures.

A big fifty count and a big hundred count are different careers. Du Plessis and Gambhir have seventy-five fifties between them and no hundred; Buttler has seven hundreds and only twenty-eight fifties. Conversion is set out on the IPL most centuries page, and the biggest of all these innings on the IPL highest individual scores page.

The fifty has become an ordinary event. In 2026 a side made more than one fifty per innings on average, against roughly two-thirds of an innings in 2009. The batting side of that change is on the IPL most runs page and the bowling cost of it on the IPL most wickets page. Sunrisers Hyderabad supply four of the eleven best individual seasons on this page.

For where the tournament sits in the Indian calendar and its pathway, see the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

All counts are computed from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball archive (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), which records every delivery of the 1,243 IPL matches played between 18 April 2008 and 31 May 2026.

A fifty is an innings of 50 to 99 runs off the bat. A "fifty-plus score" is any innings of 50 or more, hundreds included, which is why the two columns differ; both are given so that neither definition has to be assumed. Innings per fifty-plus score is total innings divided by fifty-plus scores, so a lower number is better.

Balls-to-fifty figures were computed by walking each innings delivery by delivery and recording the ball on which the batter's total first reached 50. Balls faced exclude wides and include no-balls, in line with scorecards, so a batter who reached fifty with a boundary off a no-ball is credited at that delivery.

Super-over innings are excluded from every figure. Season labels are the calendar year the tournament was played. The "share of innings" column in the season table divides individual fifty-plus scores by completed team innings in the same season; it is a crude density measure and is presented as one rather than as a rate of anything. Figures close with the 2026 final.