Most sixes in T20 international cricket: Karanbir Singh leads on 211

Rohit Sharma held the record for most sixes in T20 international cricket, and on most lists he still does. He does not. The record now belongs to Karanbir Singh, the Austria captain, on 211.

That needs explaining rather than just asserting, because it turns on a rule change most six-hitting lists have never caught up with. Rohit’s 205 is finished and is still the highest by a Test-playing nation’s batter. Here is the actual top five, why an Austrian is above it, and the number that makes the two records readable side by side.

Most sixes in T20 international cricket: the top five

Men’s T20Is, career sixes, updated 28 July 2026. Four of the five are still playing.

#	Player	Team	Sixes	Balls faced	Span
1	Karanbir Singh	Austria	211	1,480	2022-present
2	Rohit Sharma	India	205	3,003	2007-2024
3	Muhammad Waseem	UAE	196	2,233	2021-present
4	Jos Buttler	England	186	2,828	2011-present
5	Suryakumar Yadav	India	179	2,008	2021-present

Rohit is the only closed career in that five. Martin Guptill’s 173 in 122 matches is the next-highest finished career behind him.

Why an Austria captain is top of a T20I list

In 2019 the ICC granted full T20I status to every one of its members. From that point a men’s match between Austria and Hungary counted as a T20 international in exactly the same way as India against Australia, and the record books stopped distinguishing between them.

Karanbir Singh has made the most of it. He hit 1,488 runs in T20Is during 2025, the most by anyone in a calendar year, going past Suryakumar Yadav and Mohammad Rizwan. On 28 June 2026 he made 164 with 12 sixes against Hungary in an Austria total of 322 — the second-highest innings total in men’s T20I history, behind only Zimbabwe’s 344 against Gambia.

None of that is an accounting trick — the runs were scored and the record is the record. But the opposition is not the same, which is why the balls-faced column above is the most useful thing on this page.

Balls per six, which is the honest comparison

Divide balls faced by sixes hit and the two records stop looking alike.

Player	Sixes	Balls faced	Balls per six
Karanbir Singh	211	1,480	7.0
Suryakumar Yadav	179	2,008	11.2
Muhammad Waseem	196	2,233	11.4
Rohit Sharma	205	3,003	14.7
Jos Buttler	186	2,828	15.2

Karanbir has cleared the rope roughly every seven balls, twice as often as Rohit and Buttler. Rohit needed 1,523 more balls than Karanbir to reach a total six fewer, all of them against Test-playing attacks. Both facts are true at once, and a list that prints only the totals hides the more interesting one.

Rohit Sharma | 205 T20I sixes

Rohit made his T20I debut against England at the 2007 World T20 and played his last match on 29 June 2024, the World Cup final in Barbados, retiring from the format immediately after India won it. The 205 is therefore final, and it remains the most by any batter from a Test-playing nation.

He is no longer India’s captain in any format — he gave up the ODI captaincy to Shubman Gill in October 2025 — but he does still hold the overall record for the most sixes in international cricket, on 656. That total is made up of 363 in ODIs, the 205 here, and 88 in Tests, and only the ODI column can still move.

The three still climbing

Muhammad Waseem of the UAE is the closest to Karanbir on 196, and like him he plays a high volume of cricket against Associate opposition. Jos Buttler on 186 is the leading active batter from a Test nation and the only man in the top five to have faced more than 2,800 balls without finishing. Suryakumar Yadav is on 179 from just 2,008 balls, the second-best rate in the five, and is the likeliest to give India the record back.

A note on the rest of the list

Below the top five the published lists diverge, and not by one or two. For the same players in the same week you can find Nicholas Pooran at 132, 141 and 149, and Glenn Maxwell at 134, 137 and 145, depending on which site you open and when it was last touched. Rather than pick one and present it as settled, we have kept this page to the five positions that are properly sourced and dated. The ODI list and the Test list are far more stable and go to ten.

Quick answers

Who has hit the most sixes in T20 internationals?
Karanbir Singh of Austria, on 211. He passed Rohit Sharma’s 205 in 2026.

Does that count as an official record?
Yes. Every ICC member has held full T20I status since 2019, so Austria’s matches carry the same standing as India’s.

Who has hit the most T20I sixes for a Test-playing nation?
Rohit Sharma, with 205. He retired from the format after the 2024 T20 World Cup final, so the number is final.

Who is the leading active batter from a Test nation?
Jos Buttler, on 186.

Which record does Rohit Sharma still hold?
Most sixes in international cricket across all three formats, on 656.

Career figures updated 28 July 2026. Photo credit: Alamy