T20 cricket records: the biggest numbers in the shortest format
From Zimbabwe’s 344 to a nine-ball fifty, the shortest format keeps rewriting the record book. Here are the biggest T20 cricket records, and the players who own them.
Jul 19, 2026
T20 cricket records read like a list of extremes. In a handful of years the shortest format has produced the first men’s side to pass 300 in an international, a batter who reached three figures inside 27 balls, and a team bowled out for 7. This is a run through the biggest T20 cricket records, built around Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) with a note wherever an all-format mark tells the fuller story. The same milestones in the Test and 50-over game sit at very different levels, which is part of what makes the T20 numbers stand out.
The format rewards clean hitting over almost everything else, and the record book reflects it. Bowling records tend to belong to control and disguise rather than pace, while the batting entries keep climbing as associate nations post totals that would have looked absurd a decade ago.
Highest and lowest team totals in T20Is
Zimbabwe hold the record for the highest team total in a men’s T20I. They piled up 344 for 4 against Gambia in Nairobi in October 2024, the first time any men’s side had passed 340 in the format. That knocked Nepal off top spot. Nepal had become the first men’s team to reach 300 in a T20I when they made 314 for 3 against Mongolia at the 2023 Asian Games, and for just over a year that stood as the benchmark before Zimbabwe went past it.
The other extreme is just as striking. Ivory Coast were bowled out for 7 by Nigeria in November 2024, the lowest completed innings in T20I history. Both of the extreme totals arrived in associate cricket, where the gap between the strongest and weakest sides can be vast, but they are the official marks all the same.
The highest individual T20I score
Aaron Finch still owns the highest individual score in a men’s T20I. The Australia opener hit 172 off 76 balls against Zimbabwe in Harare in 2018, and the mark has held up despite a run of huge innings from associate batters since. Hazratullah Zazai’s unbeaten 162 for Afghanistan against Ireland in 2019 is the next-best score by a widely followed name, and Estonia’s Sahil Chauhan came close with 144 not out in 2024. None of them have caught Finch.
The fastest hundreds and fifties
Sahil Chauhan turned the fastest-century record into something barely believable. Playing for Estonia against Cyprus in June 2024, he reached his hundred off 27 balls on the way to 144 not out, cutting six deliveries off the previous best set earlier that year by Namibia’s Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton. The same innings gave him another record: 18 sixes, the most anyone has cleared the rope in a single T20I, past the 16 Zazai struck in 2019. You can trace the full lineage of the mark in our breakdown of the fastest century in T20 cricket.
The fastest fifty is a Nepal record. Dipendra Singh Airee reached 50 off nine balls against Mongolia at the 2023 Asian Games, ending a wait of just over 16 years to break Yuvraj Singh’s mark. Yuvraj’s own moment remains the most famous piece of hitting in the format’s history. His 12-ball fifty came in the same 2007 over against England’s Stuart Broad in which he struck six sixes, the first time it had been done in a T20I.
The leading run-scorers and six-hitters
The all-time run charts have a new name at the top. Babar Azam went past Rohit Sharma’s total of 4,231 in October 2025 to become the leading run-scorer in men’s T20I history. Rohit had retired from the format after the 2024 T20 World Cup with those 4,231 runs and five hundreds, having spent years as the standard everyone else chased.
Rohit still holds the six-hitting record. He cleared the rope 205 times in T20Is between 2007 and his retirement, more than any other player in the format. Look beyond internationals and Chris Gayle towers over the all-format lists, with more than 14,000 runs across every kind of T20 cricket he played. We track those career numbers separately in our look at the most runs in T20 cricket.
Most hundreds and fifties
Centuries are rare in a format this short, which is what makes the hundreds record notable. Rohit Sharma and Glenn Maxwell share the mark with five T20I tons each, with Maxwell drawing level in early 2024 before both moved on. Suryakumar Yadav and England’s Phil Salt sit next on four, so India own two of the top names on that list. We keep a fuller rundown in our piece on the most centuries in T20I cricket.
Fifties tell a similar story of Babar Azam catching and passing the old guard. He went beyond Virat Kohli’s 38 half-centuries in February 2026 to top that chart as well, adding the fifties record to the runs record he had claimed a few months earlier. Kohli, who retired from T20Is after the 2024 World Cup, held both marks for years, so seeing them change hands in quick succession says plenty about how the format has moved on.
The best bowling records
The best bowling figures in a T20I innings belong to Malaysia’s Syazrul Idrus, who took 7 for 8 against China in 2023, the first seven-wicket haul the format had seen. Among the Test-playing nations the standout return is Deepak Chahar’s 6 for 7 for India against Bangladesh in 2019, still the benchmark for a full-member bowler.
Over a career, the record belongs to a leg-spinner. Rashid Khan has taken more T20I wickets than anyone, moving past 190 and closing in on a first-ever 200 in the format. That fits a wider pattern in the shortest game, where spin and variation have outlasted raw speed as wicket-taking tools.
T20I records at a glance
| Record | Holder | Mark |
|---|---|---|
| Highest team total | Zimbabwe v Gambia | 344/4 (2024) |
| Lowest team total | Ivory Coast v Nigeria | 7 all out (2024) |
| Highest individual score | Aaron Finch (Australia) | 172 (2018) |
| Most career runs | Babar Azam (Pakistan) | Past 4,231 |
| Most career sixes | Rohit Sharma (India) | 205 |
| Fastest century | Sahil Chauhan (Estonia) | 27 balls (2024) |
| Fastest fifty | Dipendra Singh Airee (Nepal) | 9 balls (2023) |
| Most sixes, one innings | Sahil Chauhan (Estonia) | 18 (2024) |
| Best bowling, innings | Syazrul Idrus (Malaysia) | 7/8 (2023) |
| Most career wickets | Rashid Khan (Afghanistan) | 190-plus |
What ties the list together is how quickly it changes. Totals that once looked untouchable have fallen inside a couple of seasons, and the associate game keeps rewriting the batting entries while the biggest names still hold the career marks. Check back as the numbers move, because in this format they always do.