Most wickets in T20 cricket: Rashid Khan’s 723, and why no India bowler is close
Rashid Khan is the first bowler to 700 wickets in Twenty20 cricket, and he leads on wickets per match as well as on the raw count. The lists you find elsewhere disagree about who is second, and there is a reason for that.
Jul 30, 2024 · Updated Aug 18, 2026
Rashid Khan has taken more wickets than anyone in the history of Twenty20 cricket. The Afghanistan leg-spinner reached 723 wickets from 536 matches by the end of June 2026, and he is the only bowler to have passed 700. He took the record off Dwayne Bravo in February 2025 and has since put more than 90 wickets between himself and the field.
Most wickets in T20 cricket: the top five
These are career figures across every form of Twenty20 cricket, so they cover internationals, the Indian T20 League, the Big Bash, the Caribbean Premier League, the Vitality Blast, the SA20, the ILT20, the PSL, Major League Cricket and the rest. Figures are as they stood on 29 June 2026. That date matters more than it looks, and the next section explains why.
| Bowler | Span | Mat | Wkts | Ave | SR | 4w | 5w |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rashid Khan (Afghanistan) | 2015-2026 | 536 | 723 | 18.66 | 16.8 | 19 | 4 |
| Sunil Narine (West Indies) | 2011-2026 | 600 | 635 | 22.09 | 21.4 | 12 | 1 |
| Dwayne Bravo (West Indies) | 2006-2024 | 582 | 631 | 24.40 | 17.7 | 11 | 2 |
| Imran Tahir (South Africa) | 2006-2026 | 448 | 572 | 19.51 | 16.7 | 13 | 5 |
| Andre Russell (West Indies) | 2010-2026 | 593 | 516 | 25.64 | 17.3 | 10 | 1 |
Bravo is the only retired man in that five. Rashid, Narine, Tahir and Russell were all still taking T20 wickets in 2026, which is the first thing separating this list from its 50-over equivalent.
Shakib Al Hasan is the other member of the 500 club. He became the fifth bowler to reach 500 T20 wickets, during 2025, and Russell has since followed him there. Shakib is also the only cricketer to have made 7,000 runs and taken 500 wickets in the format.
Why published lists disagree about second place
Search for this record and you will find pages putting Bravo second on 631 and Narine third on 613. Others have Narine on 574. None of them is lying. They are snapshots, taken on different days, of a number that moves every week of the year.
Narine is the clearest case. He became the third bowler to 600 T20 wickets in his opening over of the 2025-26 ILT20, bowling for Abu Dhabi Knight Riders against Sharjah Warriorz and having Tom Abell caught. Rashid was on 681 that night and Bravo, retired, was frozen on 631. Narine then played a full Indian T20 League season and a Major League Cricket campaign he finished with a title, and by the end of June he had gone past Bravo into second.
So a list showing Bravo second is not wrong. It is old. The same applies to the T20I table further down, where several pages still have Tim Southee second on a number he stopped adding to in 2024.
This is worth stating plainly, because it is the biggest single reason cricket record pages contradict each other. An arithmetic check can prove a table is internally coherent. Only a date can tell you whether it is current.
The check the table does not run for you
Divide wickets by matches and the order changes.
| Bowler | Wkts | Mat | Wickets per match |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rashid Khan | 723 | 536 | 1.35 |
| Imran Tahir | 572 | 448 | 1.28 |
| Dwayne Bravo | 631 | 582 | 1.08 |
| Sunil Narine | 635 | 600 | 1.06 |
| Andre Russell | 516 | 593 | 0.87 |
Tahir jumps from fourth to second. Russell, who has played more matches than anyone in the group bar Narine, drops to last and is the only one of the five not averaging a wicket a game. Rashid stays top either way, which is the point. He leads on the count and on the rate, and he got there in 46 fewer matches than Bravo needed for 92 fewer wickets.
His bowling average of 18.66 is the best of the five, by 0.85 of a run from Tahir. On strike rate the two of them swap: Tahir’s 16.7 balls per wicket is fractionally better than Rashid’s 16.8, and nobody else in the group is inside a full ball of either. A leg-spinner bowling four overs in the middle of a T20 innings is supposed to be the man who slows the scoring down. These two have spent a decade being the men who end it.
Rashid Khan’s two record days
The first came on 5 February 2025, in the SA20 qualifier between MI Cape Town and Paarl Royals. Rashid had Dunith Wellalage caught in the 10th over of the chase to move to 633 and take the all-time lead off Bravo, finishing with 2 for 33. He was 26.
The second came almost exactly a year later. On 16 February 2026, playing for Afghanistan against the United Arab Emirates at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi during the T20 World Cup, he dismissed Muhammad Arfan in the 16th over to become the first bowler in the format’s history to reach 700 T20 wickets.
Bravo took 18 years and 582 matches to build the 631 that stood as the record. Rashid passed it in his tenth year.
Most wickets in T20 internationals
Restrict the question to international cricket and Rashid still leads, though the gap is narrower and the chasing pack is younger. Figures as at 20 July 2026. Our fuller list of leading T20I wicket-takers goes deeper into the same record.
| Bowler | Team | Span | Inns | Wkts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rashid Khan | Afghanistan | 2015-2026 | 115 | 193 |
| Adil Rashid | England | 2009-2026 | 143 | 169 |
| Ish Sodhi | New Zealand | 2014-2026 | 135 | 165 |
| Tim Southee | New Zealand | 2008-2024 | 123 | 164 |
| Wanindu Hasaranga | Sri Lanka | 2019-2026 | 96 | 161 |
Run the same division here and something odd falls out. Rashid takes 1.68 wickets per innings. Wanindu Hasaranga, fifth on the list and 32 wickets behind him, takes 1.68 as well. The two are separated by roughly a thousandth of a wicket per innings, and the whole 32-wicket gap is that Rashid has bowled in 19 more innings.
Nobody else is near that rate. Southee is on 1.33, Sodhi 1.22 and Adil Rashid 1.18, which is why England’s leg-spinner has needed 143 innings to reach a total Hasaranga is closing on in 96. Rashid, meanwhile, sits seven wickets short of becoming the first bowler to 200 T20I wickets.
Why there is no India bowler on either list
The absence is structural rather than a judgement on Indian bowling. Every name in the top five plays wherever there is a tournament. Rashid’s teams include Afghanistan, Gujarat Titans, MI Cape Town, MI London and MI New York. Jason Holder turned out for six different sides in 2025 alone, across the Caribbean, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the UAE and the United States.
Indian players do not have that option. The BCCI does not permit active Indian men, capped or uncapped, to play in overseas franchise leagues; clearance is available only to those who have retired from all Indian cricket, and the board has since given preliminary approval to a five-year cooling-off period even for them. So an Indian bowler’s T20 career is the Indian T20 League, domestic T20s and internationals, which is perhaps 20 to 30 matches a year against the 60 to 70 the leading names here play.
Yuzvendra Chahal is the benchmark. He became the first India bowler to take 300 wickets in T20 cricket on 2 April 2023, bowling Harry Brook against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Rajasthan’s opening match of the season and finishing with 4 for 17. Our record of India’s leading wicket-takers across formats shows how far the domestic ceiling reaches. Any list of the leading T20 wicket-takers is, in part, a list of who is allowed to keep playing.
The one record Rashid does not hold
For a single year’s work, the record belongs to Jason Holder.
| Bowler | Year | Mat | Wkts | Ave |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jason Holder | 2025 | 69 | 97 | 21.42 |
| Rashid Khan | 2018 | 61 | 96 | 15.46 |
| Dwayne Bravo | 2016 | 72 | 87 | 24.47 |
| Noor Ahmad | 2025 | 62 | 86 | 19.73 |
| Rashid Khan | 2022 | 66 | 81 | 20.00 |
Holder edged past Rashid’s 96 from 2018 on the last day of 2025, at an economy of 8.30 and with a best of 4 for 14 against Barbados Royals. He made 846 runs in the same twelve months. Two of the five entries in that table come from 2025, the other being Rashid’s young Afghanistan team-mate Noor Ahmad, which says something about how many T20 matches there now are to be played. The rise in T20 team totals over the same period is the batting side of that story.
How this compares with the 50-over list
The contrast with the leading wicket-takers in ODI cricket is total. That list is sealed. Nobody in its top 26 has played a one-day international since 2023, and the leading active bowler sits 287 wickets adrift of Muttiah Muralitharan. The same holds for the all-format international list, whose top order was completed years ago.
The T20 list is the opposite. Four of the top five were active this year, the man on top is 27, and the calendar-year record fell on the last day of 2025. Rashid Khan reaching 723 wickets is not the end of this story. If he keeps to the rate he has bowled at since 2015, the next round number will not take him long.
Most wickets in T20 cricket: quick answers
Who has taken the most wickets in T20 cricket? Rashid Khan, with 723 from 536 matches to the end of June 2026. He is the only bowler to have passed 700.
Who is the highest wicket-taker in T20 internationals? Rashid Khan again, on 193 from 115 innings as at 20 July 2026, ahead of England’s Adil Rashid on 169.
How many bowlers have taken 500 T20 wickets? Six. Rashid, Sunil Narine, Dwayne Bravo, Imran Tahir and Andre Russell are the current top five, with Shakib Al Hasan the sixth man to get there.
What is the most T20 wickets in a calendar year? Jason Holder’s 97 in 2025, one more than Rashid managed in 2018.
Which India bowler has the most T20 wickets? Yuzvendra Chahal, who in April 2023 became the first from India to reach 300 in the format.
More cricket records and features
Featured photo: NOAH SEELAM / AFP