Most wickets in international cricket: the top 15, and why no two lists agree

Muttiah Muralitharan has taken the most wickets in international cricket, and the margin is not close. The Sri Lanka off-spinner finished with 1,347 wickets across Tests, ODIs and T20Is in 495 matches between 1992 and 2011. Shane Warne is second on 1,001. Nobody else has reached four figures. Warne finished 346 behind, and no bowler since has got closer than James Anderson’s 991.

What follows is the top 15, split by format, with the arithmetic shown so you can check it. That matters more on this list than on most, because the published versions of it disagree with each other, and two of the disagreements have real explanations rather than being errors.

Most wickets in international cricket

Figures are for men’s international cricket as at 15 August 2026. Starc is the only active bowler in the table.

#	Player	Country	Span	Mat	Test	ODI	T20I	Total
1	Muttiah Muralitharan	SL	1992-2011	495	800	534	13	1,347
2	Shane Warne	AUS	1992-2007	339	708	293	0	1,001
3	James Anderson	ENG	2002-2024	401	704	269	18	991
4	Anil Kumble	IND	1990-2008	403	619	337	0	956
5	Glenn McGrath	AUS	1993-2007	376	563	381	5	949
6	Wasim Akram	PAK	1984-2003	460	414	502	0	916
7	Stuart Broad	ENG	2006-2023	344	604	178	65	847
8	Shaun Pollock	SA	1995-2008	423	421	393	15	829
9	Waqar Younis	PAK	1989-2003	349	373	416	0	789
10	Tim Southee	NZ	2008-2024	394	391	221	164	776
11	Ravichandran Ashwin	IND	2010-2024	287	537	156	72	765
12=	Chaminda Vaas	SL	1994-2009	439	355	400	6	761
12=	Mitchell Starc*	AUS	2010-	301	435	247	79	761
14	Courtney Walsh	WI	1984-2001	337	519	227	0	746
15	Brett Lee	AUS	1999-2012	322	310	380	28	718

The two checks you can run on any version of this list

A combined-formats table has to reconcile in two directions, and a broken one usually fails both. First, every player’s Test, ODI and T20I wickets must add up to their own total. Second, each format column must sum to the same grand total as the totals column.

Run it here and it closes exactly. The Test column adds to 7,753, the ODI column to 4,934 and the T20I column to 465. Those three come to 13,152, which is precisely what you get adding the fifteen totals down the right-hand side. If a version of this list fails that second check, a row has been dropped or a format has been left out of somebody’s line, and it is worth finding out which before you trust the order.

The same test works on match counts. Muralitharan’s 495 is 133 Tests, 350 ODIs and 12 T20Is; Ashwin’s 287 is 106, 116 and 65.

Why the lists disagree about Anil Kumble

Look up Kumble’s international tally and you will find 956 on some pages and 953 on others. Both are right, and neither is a typo.

Kumble played ODIs for a composite Asia XI, in the 2005 World Tsunami Appeal match and the Afro-Asia Cup that followed. Wickets taken in those games count as official ODI wickets, but they were not taken for India. So 956 is his full international record and 953 is his record for India, which is why Indian sources reporting him as the country’s leading wicket-taker tend to use the smaller number. The three-wicket gap is the Asia XI.

The same footnote applies at the top of the table. Muralitharan’s 1,347 also includes appearances for composite sides rather than Sri Lanka alone. It does not change who leads, but it explains a discrepancy that otherwise looks like sloppiness, and no version of this list we could find bothers to say so.

James Anderson’s number is not 976

Most published versions of this list, including the earlier version of this page, have Anderson on 975 or 976 wickets. That figure is out of date rather than wrong. It was correct while he was still playing.

Anderson kept going until July 2024. His 188th and final Test was against West Indies at Lord’s, where he took three second-innings wickets to finish on 704 in Tests. Add his 269 in ODIs and 18 in T20Is and the career total is 991 from 401 matches.

That matters for one reason beyond tidiness. At 991 he finished ten wickets short of Warne’s 1,001. A list still carrying 976 puts the gap at twenty-five and quietly turns a near miss into a comfortable one. Anderson is the closest anybody has come to the 1,000 club in nineteen years, and on the stale number it does not look that way.

The T20I column is nearly empty, and one man owns a third of it

The phrase “international cricket” implies three formats. The numbers say otherwise. Of the 13,152 wickets in this table, just 465 came in T20Is. That is 3.5 per cent. This is, in practice, a Test and ODI record with a rounding error attached.

Five of the fifteen never took a T20I wicket at all: Warne, Kumble, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Courtney Walsh. None of them ever played one, which the match column confirms without needing a separate source. Warne’s 339 matches are 145 Tests and 194 ODIs; Kumble’s 403 are 132 and 271. Both add up with nothing left over.

Then there is Tim Southee. His 164 T20I wickets are more than a third of the entire T20I output of this fifteen-man group, and he is the only bowler on the list whose career shape looks like a modern one: 391 in Tests, 221 in ODIs, 164 in T20Is, spread far more evenly than anyone above him. Ashwin’s 72 and Starc’s 79 are the next closest. Nobody in the top nine cleared 20.

Mitchell Starc is the only active bowler on the list

The earlier version of this page said Anderson led all active bowlers, which stopped being true in July 2024. It is Starc now, and he is the only current player anywhere near the table.

He arrived in it during the week this page was updated. On 13 August 2026, in the first Test against Bangladesh at Darwin, Starc had Shadman Islam caught at gully for his 434th Test wicket, passing Rangana Herath’s 433 to become the most successful left-arm bowler in Test history. He added a second in the innings to reach 435, which put his international total on 761.

That is exactly level with Chaminda Vaas, and the comparison is the interesting part: Vaas needed 439 matches to get there and Starc has needed 301. The figure was also still moving as this was written, with Australia batting again on the third evening and Bangladesh still to have a second innings, so treat 761 as a stamp rather than a settled number.

Where it does not move much is the gap above him. Starc is 240 wickets behind Warne and 586 behind Muralitharan, at 36 years old. The 1,000 club is not going to take a third member soon.

Format by format

Muralitharan holds two of the three format records outright. His 800 Test wickets and 534 in ODIs are both all-time marks, and holding the top spot in the two long-form columns is the whole reason his combined total is so far clear. The T20I record belongs to Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan, a bowler nowhere near this table, which is the point in miniature: the three formats reward completely different careers.

Behind Muralitharan the Test order runs Warne on 708, Anderson on 704, Kumble on 619 and Broad on 604. The ODI order runs Wasim Akram on 502, Waqar Younis on 416 and Vaas on 400, an all-Pakistani and Sri Lankan top four in which the most recent bowler to finish was Muralitharan himself, in 2011. We break each of those down separately in our lists of the most wickets in ODI cricket and the most wickets in T20 cricket, and India’s own leaders are covered in the most wickets for India across formats.

For the batting equivalent of this page, see the most centuries in international cricket, where the same arithmetic check applies and produces a similarly lopsided T20I column.

Frequently asked questions

Who has taken the most wickets in international cricket? Muttiah Muralitharan, with 1,347 in 495 matches between 1992 and 2011.

How many bowlers have taken 1,000 international wickets? Two. Muralitharan on 1,347 and Warne on 1,001. Anderson got closest to joining them and finished on 991.

Who is the highest wicket-taker in international cricket among active players? Mitchell Starc, on 761 as at 15 August 2026.

Who has the most Test wickets? Muralitharan, with 800, ahead of Warne on 708 and Anderson on 704.

Who has the most ODI wickets? Muralitharan again, with 534, ahead of Wasim Akram on 502.

Has any Indian bowler taken 1,000 international wickets? No. Kumble is India’s leader on 956, or 953 counting only his wickets for India, with Ashwin next on 765.

How many wickets do you need to make this top 15? 718, which is where Brett Lee currently sits.

Browse more cricket records and all-time lists

Featured photo: SANKA VIDANAGAMA / AFP