Ishan Kishan broke Suryakumar’s calendar-year record, and New Zealand won in Hamilton to make the series 3-2
Kishan’s 61 took him to 1,220 T20I runs in 2026, but Tim Seifert’s 93 and Glenn Phillips’ unbeaten 65 chased down 192 at Seddon Park with two overs left.
Nov 1, 2026
Ishan Kishan needed six runs in Hamilton to pass Suryakumar Yadav, and he had them within his first few balls. By the time he walked off for 61 he had 1,220 T20I runs in 2026, the most by an Indian batter in a calendar year. It was the best thing India took from a night that ended with New Zealand chasing 192 with two overs to spare.
New Zealand won the fifth T20I at Seddon Park by seven wickets on Sunday, 1 November. India still take the series 3-2, but they won the first three and lost the last two, which is not the finish they had in mind.
Kishan and Iyer, then nothing much
Mitchell Santner won the toss and bowled, and his tall seamers had India in trouble early. Abhishek Sharma tried to hit Adam Milne’s first ball out of the ground, and Daryl Mitchell took the catch at mid-on. Abhishek had needed 12 runs to pass Suryakumar himself. He made 1. Sanju Samson scratched around for 4 off 10 before a leading edge left India 19 for 2 in the fourth over.
Kishan and Shreyas Iyer then took the game away from New Zealand for a while. They put on 93 in about seven overs and had India 112 for 2 after 10.1 overs. Iyer’s fifty came off 22 balls. Kishan hit five fours and five sixes in his 61 off 32 and went past 2,000 T20I runs on the way, the seventh Indian to get there.
Then New Zealand’s seamers started banging the ball in. Blair Tickner got extra bounce to have Kishan caught on the boundary, Nathan Smith had Iyer top-edging to Tim Seifert behind the stumps, and Smith then caught Tilak Varma off his own bowling, one ball after a no-ball had cost him the same wicket. Naman Dhir’s 33 and Nitish Kumar Reddy’s 22 got India to 191 for 8, which looked short of what the first ten overs had promised.
Milne finished with 4 for 19 from his four overs, all of them in the powerplay or at the death, and was named player of the match.
One dropped catch, and Seifert made it count
Finn Allen top-edged Arshdeep Singh to Kishan in the second over, and New Zealand were 9 for 1. In the fourth, Seifert, on 13 and out of touch, hit one straight to Dhir at deep point. Dhir dropped it.
India paid for that. Seifert started hitting everything straight and finished with 93 off 50 balls, with 11 fours and five sixes. He added 86 for the third wicket with Glenn Phillips before an inside edge off Nitish dragged onto his stumps, seven runs short of a first T20I hundred. Mitchell made a quick 29 before Abhishek took a diving catch at long-off off Varun Chakravarthy, who was playing his first game of the series.
Phillips was unbeaten on 65 off 38 when New Zealand got there at 195 for 3 in 18 overs.
Phillips finishes on 341
Phillips came into Hamilton needing 56 runs to pass Phil Salt’s 331 against West Indies in 2023, the most by any batter in a bilateral T20I series. He finished on 341, with a hundred and three fifties, and was named player of the series.
India do not have long to think about it. The five-match ODI series against New Zealand starts at Eden Park on Wednesday, 4 November.