IPL Most Five-Wicket Hauls: All-Time Records
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in the Indian Premier League8 min read
There is no dominant name at the top of this list, because there is no room for one. Four bowlers have taken two five-wicket hauls in the Indian Premier League — Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Jaydev Unadkat and James Faulkner — and thirty others have taken one. Nobody has managed three in nineteen seasons.
Compare that with a first-class competition, where a leading bowler might take five in an innings twenty times, and the reason is obvious: an IPL bowler gets 24 balls. To take five wickets he needs five of them to produce dismissals in an innings where the batting side is trying to lose no more than six or seven wickets in total, and where two or three of those will fall to somebody else.
The result is a record that behaves more like a lottery than a leaderboard. The full list of all 38 spells, with figures, opponents and venues, is on the best bowling figures records; this page is about the pattern rather than the spells.
The four bowlers with two five-wicket hauls
| Bowler | Hauls | First | Second | Career wickets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bhuvneshwar Kumar | 2 | 5/19 v Kings XI Punjab, 2017 | 5/30 v Gujarat Titans, 2023 | 226 |
| Jasprit Bumrah | 2 | 5/10 v Kolkata Knight Riders, 2022 | 5/21 v Royal Challengers Bengaluru, 2024 | 187 |
| Jaydev Unadkat | 2 | 5/25 v Delhi Daredevils, 2013 | 5/30 v Sunrisers Hyderabad, 2017 | 114 |
| James Faulkner | 2 | 5/20 v Sunrisers Hyderabad, 2013 | 5/16 v Sunrisers Hyderabad, 2013 | 59 |
Faulkner's pair is the freak entry. Both came in the 2013 season, both for Rajasthan Royals, and both against Sunrisers Hyderabad — 5 for 20 at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in April and 5 for 16 at Hyderabad in May. He finished his IPL career with 59 wickets in total, meaning roughly one wicket in six he ever took came in one of those two spells.
Bhuvneshwar's two are separated by six years and two franchises' worth of squad turnover, both taken for Sunrisers Hyderabad at either end of a long career. Unadkat's, similarly, arrived in 2013 and 2017 with 114 wickets spread around them.
Five-wicket hauls by season
| Season | Five-fors | Season | Five-fors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 3 | 2018 | 1 |
| 2009 | 1 | 2019 | 1 |
| 2010 | 0 | 2020 | 1 |
| 2011 | 4 | 2021 | 3 |
| 2012 | 3 | 2022 | 4 |
| 2013 | 3 | 2023 | 4 |
| 2014 | 0 | 2024 | 3 |
| 2015 | 0 | 2025 | 2 |
| 2016 | 1 | 2026 | 1 |
| 2017 | 3 | — | — |
Three seasons — 2010, 2014 and 2015 — produced none at all. The busiest were 2011, 2022 and 2023 with four each. There is no trend in either direction: the two highest-scoring seasons in the competition's history, 2025 and 2026, produced three between them, and the low-scoring 2011 produced four on its own. Five-wicket hauls track collapses, and collapses are not more or less common than they were.
The bowlers who have never taken one
This is the more interesting list, and it undermines the record's meaning as a measure of quality.
| Bowler | Career wickets | Five-wicket hauls |
|---|---|---|
| Piyush Chawla | 192 | 0 |
| Ravichandran Ashwin | 187 | 0 |
| Dwayne Bravo | 183 | 0 |
| Rashid Khan | 179 | 0 |
| Kagiso Rabada | 148 | 0 |
| Trent Boult | 145 | 0 |
| Mohammed Shami | 145 | 0 |
| Umesh Yadav | 144 | 0 |
| Axar Patel | 139 | 0 |
| Mohammed Siraj | 128 | 0 |
| Shardul Thakur | 119 | 0 |
| Kuldeep Yadav | 112 | 0 |
Twelve of the twenty-five leading wicket-takers in IPL history have never taken five in an innings. Dwayne Bravo took 183 wickets — the seventh-highest total in the competition — without a single five-for, because he bowled almost exclusively at the death, in one and two-over bursts, where the chance of getting through five batters in a spell is close to nil. Kagiso Rabada has six four-wicket hauls and no five-fors, which is the tidiest illustration on the page of how thin the margin is.
Ravichandran Ashwin's figure is the starkest. He has bowled more overs of IPL cricket than anyone — 785 — taken 187 wickets, and has one four-wicket haul and no five-fors in 217 innings.
Four or more wickets, which is the real marker
If the aim is to identify bowlers who have repeatedly run through an innings, the four-wicket threshold does the job that five cannot.
| # | Bowler | 4+ wicket hauls | of which five-fors | Career wickets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yuzvendra Chahal | 9 | 1 | 233 |
| 2 | Sunil Narine | 8 | 1 | 207 |
| 3 | Lasith Malinga | 7 | 1 | 170 |
| 4 | Kagiso Rabada | 6 | 0 | 148 |
| 5 | Bhuvneshwar Kumar | 5 | 2 | 226 |
| 5 | Jasprit Bumrah | 5 | 2 | 187 |
| 5 | Amit Mishra | 5 | 1 | 174 |
| 5 | Harshal Patel | 5 | 1 | 151 |
| 9 | Ravindra Jadeja | 4 | 1 | 180 |
| 9 | Mohit Sharma | 4 | 1 | 134 |
| 9 | Mitchell Starc | 4 | 1 | 76 |
| 9 | Lakshmipathy Balaji | 4 | 1 | 76 |
| 9 | Chris Morris | 4 | 0 | 95 |
| 9 | Kuldeep Yadav | 4 | 0 | 112 |
| 9 | Andrew Tye | 4 | 1 | 42 |
Yuzvendra Chahal's nine is a real record with a real gap behind it, and it belongs to the competition's leading wicket-taker. The five-wicket-haul record does not, and that is the argument for reading this table first. The full breakdown of the four-wicket bracket is on the most four-wicket hauls records.
Which franchises take them, and which concede them
Counting franchise continuations together — Delhi Daredevils with Delhi Capitals, Kings XI Punjab with Punjab Kings, Royal Challengers Bangalore with Bengaluru — the distribution is lopsided at both ends.
| Franchise | Five-fors taken for | Five-fors conceded |
|---|---|---|
| Mumbai Indians | 8 | 4 |
| Rajasthan Royals | 5 | 2 |
| Royal Challengers Bengaluru | 4 | 1 |
| Sunrisers Hyderabad | 3 | 8 |
| Punjab Kings | 3 | 4 |
| Kolkata Knight Riders | 3 | 3 |
| Lucknow Super Giants | 3 | 2 |
| Delhi Capitals | 2 | 4 |
| Chennai Super Kings | 2 | 2 |
| Rising Pune Supergiant | 2 | 1 |
| Gujarat Titans | 1 | 3 |
Mumbai Indians bowlers have taken eight, more than twice any other side's tally, and four of the eight came from Jasprit Bumrah, Lasith Malinga and Munaf Patel — three generations of the same job at the same franchise. Sunrisers Hyderabad have conceded eight and taken three, the only side with a ratio that lopsided, and four of the five five-fors bowled at their own ground in Hyderabad have come at their batting's expense.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru have conceded exactly one in nineteen seasons, which is remarkable given that they have also been bowled out for 49 — the lowest total in IPL history — and for 68, and for 70 twice. Their collapses have tended to be shared around three or four bowlers rather than delivered by one.
Does a five-for win the match?
Of the 38 five-wicket hauls, the bowler's side won 26 and lost 11, with one match abandoned. That is a 70 per cent win rate — lower, oddly, than the 79 per cent associated with a four-wicket haul.
The explanation is straightforward once stated. A five-for often arrives in an innings that was already collapsing for other reasons, sometimes late, sometimes in a match the bowling side was going to win regardless. A four-wicket haul is more likely to include the wickets that caused the collapse. Neither statistic is causal, and eleven defeats from 38 is enough to say that running through a side is not by itself sufficient.
Whether anyone will get to three
There have been 219 innings in which a bowler took exactly four wickets, against 38 in which one took five or more. On that ratio a spell that reaches four converts to five about one time in seven. To collect three five-fors a bowler would therefore need something in the region of twenty innings of four or more — more than twice what Chahal has managed in 184 innings.
The realistic route is a career of Chahal's length combined with better conversion luck. Bumrah, at 187 wickets and still bowling, is the nearest active candidate: two five-fors and three four-wicket hauls, at Mumbai Indians where he bowls the new ball and the last over of most innings. But calling it likely would be over-reading a small number.
For the broader picture of how bowling records are shaped by the four-over limit, the best bowling average records and the tournament's own history on the IPL hub are the useful companions, alongside the wider guide to cricket in India.
Sources and method
A five-wicket haul is five or more wickets credited to one bowler in one innings, which includes the three six-wicket returns in IPL history. Wickets are credited for bowled, caught, caught and bowled, lbw, stumped and hit wicket; run-outs, retirements and obstructing the field are not credited to a bowler.
All counts 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, and are complete rather than a selection. The list of bowlers with none is drawn from the twenty-five leading wicket-takers in the competition; there are many more with none further down.
The conversion ratio quoted in the closing section — 219 innings of exactly four wickets against 38 of five or more — is a straight count from the same archive and is offered as a rough guide rather than a predictive model. Franchise names are those in use at the time of each match, which is why Bhuvneshwar Kumar's second haul is against Gujarat Titans and Jaydev Unadkat's first is against Delhi Daredevils.