Best wicket-keeper in the world: most international dismissals, all-time and right now

There is no complete statistic for wicket-keeping. Byes conceded are recorded, but the chances a keeper does not get a glove to, the leg-side take nobody notices and the half-stumping that was never appealed are in nobody’s database. The one number that exists across every career is dismissals — catches taken behind the stumps plus stumpings — and that is what this page ranks.

Read it as the most, not the best. A keeper’s total depends on how much cricket his country plays and how often his bowlers find the edge, which is why the list rewards longevity as much as hands. The figures below are from ESPNcricinfo and are current to 16 September 2026.

Most dismissals by a wicket-keeper in international cricket

#	Keeper	Country	Span	Dismissals	Ct	St
1	Mark Boucher	South Africa	1997-2012	998	952	46
2	Adam Gilchrist	Australia	1996-2008	905	813	92
3	MS Dhoni	India	2004-2019	829	634	195
4	Kumar Sangakkara	Sri Lanka	2000-2015	678	539	139
5	Ian Healy	Australia	1988-1999	628	560	68
6	Quinton de Kock	South Africa	2012-2026	580	532	48
7	Jos Buttler	England	2011-2026	516	454	62
8	Rod Marsh	Australia	1970-1984	479	463	16
9	Jeff Dujon	West Indies	1981-1991	474	448	26
10	Brad Haddin	Australia	2001-2015	474	449	25
11	Mushfiqur Rahim	Bangladesh	2005-2026	472	371	101
12	Denesh Ramdin	West Indies	2005-2019	468	429	39

Three of the twelve are still playing: Quinton de Kock, Jos Buttler and Mushfiqur Rahim. Everyone above them has finished, and the gap from Boucher to second is 93 dismissals, so the order at the top is not going to change for a long time.

The India entry is the one to look at twice. MS Dhoni’s 829 came with 195 stumpings, 56 more than Sangakkara and more than twice Gilchrist’s 92. Stumpings are the part of keeping that cannot be luck — they need a keeper standing up to spin, taking the ball clean and breaking the stumps in the fraction of a second the batter is out of his ground. Nobody else on this list is close.

Mark Boucher, and the two dismissals he never got

Boucher’s 998 breaks down as 555 in 147 Tests, 424 in 295 ODIs and 19 more in a short T20I career. The Test figure is a record in its own right and the next man is 139 behind. He was two short of 1,000 when a bail flew into his eye during a warm-up match at Taunton in July 2012 and ended his career on the spot. He never played for South Africa again.

Adam Gilchrist’s 905 is 416 in Tests and 472 in ODIs, and he is second on both lists — the only keeper who is runner-up in two formats. Ian Healy’s 628, all of it before the T20 era, came from 395 in Tests and 233 in ODIs.

Format by format

The all-time table flattens three different jobs into one column. Split by format, three different keepers lead.

Format	Leader	Dismissals	Ct	St	Next best
Tests	Mark Boucher	555	532	23	Adam Gilchrist 416
ODIs	Kumar Sangakkara	482	383	99	Adam Gilchrist 472
T20Is	Quinton de Kock	117	98	19	Jos Buttler 110

Sangakkara took the ODI record off Gilchrist on 29 January 2015 and finished 10 ahead of him. It is the tightest of the three, and it is worth knowing that Sangakkara did not keep in every match he played — he kept in only 464 of his 594 international appearances.

The T20I row is where the measure matters. Sorted by all dismissals, Jos Buttler leads with 120. But ten of those were catches he took in the outfield in matches where somebody else kept. Counting only what he did behind the stumps, de Kock leads 117 to 110. Whichever list you are reading, check whether it is counting the gloves or the man.

MS Dhoni is the only keeper in the top five of all three formats — fifth in Tests on 294, third in ODIs on 444 and fourth in T20Is on 91. Boucher and Gilchrist both retired before T20 internationals mattered; de Kock and Buttler were never first-choice Test keepers for long enough.

The best wicket-keeper in the world right now

The all-time list is a longevity list. For who is actually doing the job best today, here is every keeper with the most dismissals since 1 January 2024.

Keeper	Country	Dismissals	Ct	St	Innings
Litton Das	Bangladesh	128	107	21	94
Alex Carey	Australia	116	105	11	69
Mohammad Rizwan	Pakistan	107	95	12	84
Kusal Mendis	Sri Lanka	107	74	33	116
Jamie Smith	England	85	83	2	72
Shai Hope	West Indies	74	69	5	95
Rishabh Pant	India	67	61	6	48

Litton Das has the most, from 94 innings behind the stumps in under three years. Alex Carey has the rate: 116 dismissals from 69 innings, a quarter fewer innings than Litton for only twelve fewer dismissals. Rishabh Pant’s 67 from 48 innings is the next best rate on the list, which is the more useful way to read an India keeper who missed a year of cricket.

Kusal Mendis is the outlier in shape rather than volume: 33 of his 107 are stumpings, almost a third of the total, because Sri Lanka bowl more spin than anyone and he stands up to it.

Who was the most efficient keeper of all?

Dismissals per innings is the closest thing to a quality measure the records hold, and over a long Test career it is fairly stable. Among the twenty keepers with the most Test dismissals, Quinton de Kock has the best rate at 2.30 per innings, ahead of Adam Gilchrist on 2.18 and Brad Haddin on 2.11. Boucher, who has 323 more Test dismissals than de Kock, sits on 1.98.

That is a fair summary of the whole page. Boucher kept for longer and in more matches than anyone; Gilchrist and de Kock took more per innings; Dhoni did something neither of them did behind the spinners. Which of those makes a keeper the best is not a question the scorecard answers.

For more on the part of the job Dhoni owns, see our lists of the most stumpings in Test cricket and the most stumpings in ODI cricket.

More cricket explainers and records

Photo credit: Alamy

All dismissal figures from ESPNcricinfo Statsguru, pulled 16 September 2026. Dismissals are catches taken as wicket-keeper plus stumpings; catches taken in the outfield are excluded.