The IPL has been running since 2008, and the record book now covers close to two decades of T20 cricket at a scale no other franchise league matches. This is a reference page for the all-time marks — batting, bowling, team totals and the speed gun.
A note on sourcing before the numbers: the player and team records below reflect the official IPL records listing, which stated it was last updated on 9 August 2026 — after the 2026 season concluded. Records involving active players move, so treat any figure here as a snapshot and check the official source if precision matters.
The headline all-time records
| Record | Holder | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Most runs | Virat Kohli | 8,779 |
| Highest individual score | Chris Gayle | 175 |
| Most sixes | Chris Gayle | 313 |
| Most wickets | Yuzvendra Chahal | 233 |
| Best bowling figures | Alzarri Joseph | 6/12 |
| Highest team total | Sunrisers Hyderabad | 287/3 |
| Most runs by a team | Mumbai Indians | 45,310 |
| Most wickets by a team | Mumbai Indians | 1,675 |
Two of these are worth pausing on. Kohli’s run tally and Chahal’s wicket tally belong to players still active, so both continue to move — any article quoting them as fixed is quoting a moment, not a record in the settled sense.
Gayle’s 175 is different. It was made in 2013 and has stood for well over a decade, in a format that has become dramatically more aggressive since. That it has survived the scoring inflation of the intervening years is the strongest indication of how far outside the normal distribution the innings was.
Team totals
Sunrisers Hyderabad hold the highest team total at 287/3. The figure is worth putting in context: for most of the IPL’s history, 200 was a winning score and 220 was exceptional. Totals approaching 290 belong to a distinctly recent phase of the competition.
At the other end, the lowest total in IPL history is Royal Challengers’ 49 all out against Kolkata Knight Riders on 23 April 2017, a collapse completed inside 9.4 overs. A caution here: the official records listing displays an implausible figure for the lowest-total field, which appears to be a display error, so we have used the widely reported and consistently cross-checked 49.
That gap — 49 to 287 — is the widest span in the record book and a reasonable summary of what T20 can produce.
The fastest deliveries
The speed record has stood for a long time, and the two fastest are separated by a margin small enough to be within measurement noise.
| Bowler | Speed | When |
|---|---|---|
| Shaun Tait | 157.71 kmph | 2011, for Rajasthan Royals v Delhi, Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur |
| Lockie Ferguson | 157.3 kmph | 2022 final, for Gujarat Titans v Rajasthan Royals |
Tait’s delivery, bowled to Aaron Finch on 12 April 2011, has now stood for well over a decade. Ferguson came within 0.41 kmph of it in the 2022 final without displacing it.
An honest caveat about speed guns
Speed-gun figures deserve more scepticism than they usually receive, and it is worth stating plainly rather than presenting the numbers as settled.
- Equipment and calibration vary between venues and between seasons.
- The measurement point matters — speed at release differs from speed off the pitch.
- Broadcast displays are not a scientific instrument, and errors are not unusual.
- Comparisons across eras are shaky, since the technology has changed since 2011.
- A 0.41 kmph gap is within the margin most systems can reliably resolve.
None of this means the numbers are worthless. It means the ordering between two deliveries a fraction of a kilometre per hour apart is less definitive than a record table implies, and anyone presenting it as precise is over-reading the data.
How scoring has changed
The record book reads differently depending on which era you take it from, and the shift is genuine rather than a matter of perception.
| Era | What a par score looked like | What stood out |
|---|---|---|
| Early seasons | Around 160–170 | 180 was a strong total |
| Middle period | Around 170–180 | 200 was notable but not rare |
| Recent seasons | Frequently 190–200+ | Totals above 250 have appeared |
Several things drove it: bats improved, boundary awareness in field settings sharpened, players arrived having grown up on T20 rather than adapting to it, and rule changes shifted the balance. The Impact Player substitution in particular lets a side field an extra specialist batter, which changes how deep an innings can be attacked.
The practical consequence for reading records is that raw totals are not comparable across the competition’s history. A 180 in an early season and a 180 in a recent one were different achievements.
Records that are hardest to shift
Some marks are more vulnerable than others, and it is worth distinguishing them.
- Gayle’s 175 — genuinely difficult. It requires an innings well beyond even modern scoring norms.
- Gayle’s 313 sixes — an accumulation record from a long career, hard to approach without similar longevity.
- Kohli’s run tally — moving, since he is active; a career record rather than a single performance.
- Chahal’s wickets — likewise active and accumulating.
- Alzarri Joseph’s 6/12 — a single-match figure, so a matter of one exceptional spell.
- The speed record — unchanged since 2011 despite many fast bowlers since.
The distinction that matters is between accumulation records, which fall to whoever plays longest at a high level, and single-performance records, which require one extraordinary day and can stand for decades. Gayle’s 175 is the clearest example of the second kind.
Reading record tables carefully
- Check the update date. Any record involving an active player has one.
- Distinguish career totals from single-match marks. They are not the same kind of achievement.
- Be wary of aggregator sites. We found figures for the highest team total that disagreed with the official listing.
- Treat speed-gun numbers as approximate, particularly across different seasons.
- Watch for franchise renaming. Records span teams that have changed names or been replaced entirely.
- Remember the era. A total from 2010 and one from 2026 are not comparable.
The third point is not hypothetical. In compiling this page we found widely republished figures for the highest team total that were superseded, and an official field displaying an obviously incorrect lowest total. Cross-checking is not pedantry here — it is the difference between a correct page and a confidently wrong one.
In short
As of the official listing’s 9 August 2026 update: Virat Kohli leads the run charts on 8,779, Yuzvendra Chahal the wickets on 233, Chris Gayle holds both the highest individual score (175) and most sixes (313), and Alzarri Joseph has the best figures at 6/12. Sunrisers Hyderabad’s 287/3 is the highest team total; Royal Challengers’ 49 all out in 2017 is the lowest.
Shaun Tait’s 157.71 kmph from 2011 remains the fastest recorded delivery, with Lockie Ferguson’s 157.3 kmph in the 2022 final the closest anyone has come — though a gap that small sits within what speed guns can reliably distinguish. For team and venue detail see our IPL teams and venues guide, and our IPL page for season coverage.
Records the IPL does not formally keep
Some of the numbers most discussed around the IPL are not official records at all, which is worth knowing before treating them as settled.
- Fastest delivery is not an official ICC or BCCI record. It is a broadcast measurement, which is why the caveats above matter.
- Longest six is measured inconsistently and by different methods across seasons; treat published distances with caution.
- Fastest fifty and hundred are tracked reliably, since balls faced is a recorded statistic rather than an instrument reading.
- Catch and fielding records are recorded but rarely presented consistently.
- Auction prices are widely reported and are not a cricketing record at all, though they are frequently listed alongside them.
The distinction is between things counted from the scorecard, which are reliable, and things measured by equipment or estimated, which are not. Balls faced, runs, wickets and dismissals are counted. Speeds and distances are measured, and measurement introduces error that a record table conceals.
The franchise renaming problem
Anyone working through IPL history runs into a naming issue that makes the record book harder to read than it looks.
| What you see | What it refers to |
|---|---|
| Royal Challengers Bangalore / Bengaluru | The same franchise; the name changed with the city’s official spelling |
| Delhi Daredevils / Delhi Capitals | The same franchise, rebranded |
| Kings XI Punjab / Punjab Kings | The same franchise, rebranded |
| Deccan Chargers / Sunrisers Hyderabad | Different franchises, both based in Hyderabad |
| Gujarat Lions / Gujarat Titans | Different franchises, both based in Gujarat |
The last two rows are the trap. A rebrand carries history forward; a new franchise does not. Deccan Chargers and Sunrisers Hyderabad are separate entities despite sharing a city, and the same is true of Gujarat Lions and Gujarat Titans. Record listings do not always make that clear, and it is a common source of incorrect claims about a team’s history.
Where to check a record properly
- Start with the official IPL records listing, which carries an update date.
- Cross-check against a specialist statistics source before publishing or relying on a figure.
- Ignore aggregator listicles as a primary source — they republish each other and go stale together.
- Note whether the player is active. A career record held by a current player is a snapshot.
- Check the season a single-match record was set in, for era context.
- Treat any instrument-measured figure — speed, distance — as approximate.
We applied exactly this process to this page, and it changed two entries: a widely republished figure for the highest team total turned out to have been superseded, and an official field for the lowest total displayed an obviously impossible value. Neither error would have been caught by relying on a single source.
What the records tell you about T20 itself
Read as a group rather than individually, the IPL record book describes how the format actually behaves — and it is not quite how it is usually described.
The range is enormous. A competition where 49 and 287 are both real team totals is not one where outcomes cluster tightly. That spread is the defining statistical feature of T20, and it is why a single match tells you very little about the relative strength of two sides.
Individual performances dominate more than in longer formats. Gayle’s 175 came in a match, not a season. One player having an exceptional two hours can decide a game outright, which is far less true across five days or even fifty overs.
Career records reward longevity over peak. Kohli’s runs and Chahal’s wickets are accumulations across many seasons at a consistently high level, which is a different quality from the one-off brilliance the format is marketed on.
- Scoring has inflated substantially, so era context is essential to any comparison.
- Bowling records have not inflated equivalently, which is itself informative about where the format’s balance sits.
- Team accumulation records favour franchises that have existed continuously since 2008.
- Single-match records survive longest, because they need an outlier day rather than a long career.
- The speed record has not moved since 2011, despite many fast bowlers and better equipment.
That last point is the one people find most surprising. Fifteen years of fast bowling, improved conditioning and better measurement, and the fastest recorded delivery is still from 2011 — which either says something about Tait, or something about how much confidence to place in speed-gun comparisons across eras. Probably both.
For the market side of the record book rather than the on-field side, see the most expensive player in IPL history. Auction prices are a different category of record from runs and wickets, and that page explains why.
This is an editorial article from the team at Readdy Anna Cricket. It covers results, records, schedules and formats only — we do not publish odds, tips, predictions or win probabilities. Records and schedules change; confirm against the official source before relying on them. Readdy Anna Cricket is for adults 18 and over. Online gaming laws in India changed under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 and vary by state — check the rules where you live. Free confidential support is listed on our responsible gaming page.