Despite playing for seven years, this bowler tops the chart
Since the advent of the Twenty-20 format, India and England have played 24 games against each other. Out of 24 games, India won 13, whereas England triumphed in 11. The rivalry has witnessed players hitting boundaries for runs and bowlers putting pressure on the batters to restrict runs and pick wickets.
Ahead of the first game that India is scheduled to play against England in Eden Gardens, Kolkata, on January 22, let us take a look at the English bowlers with the maximum wickets in the India versus England T20I rivalry.
Note that only one bowler across both teams has managed to pick up over 20 wickets in the India versus England rivalry.
In a T20I career that spanned 10 years, from 2014 to 2022, Moeen Ali played 10 T20I games against India. In 10 games, he picked seven wickets at an economy of 9.38 with a best bowling figure of 2/21. In 140 balls he bowled, Ali gave away 219 runs—not an impressive overall outing against the Men in Blue.
Best remembered for running into AB de Villiers in Chittagong in 2014, the man with earrings and an inked body played only five T20I games for England against India. All five games were played in 2011-2012, and in those five games, he picked up seven wickets at an economy of 8.41. Given his career stalled, he never made a glorious comeback, and he is not remembered today by the majority of cricket enthusiasts. He is one of the few English bowlers to have registered a four-wicket haul against India in T20Is.
Since 2021, England’s 29-year-old Jofra Archer has only played six T20I games against India. In those six games, he collected eight wickets against India at an economy of 7.83. Unlike the two bowlers mentioned above, Archer is part of the T20I squad that will face India in the upcoming series. Apart from T20I, he will also represent England in the ODI series against India and the ICC Champions Trophy.
Adil Rashid has played 13 T20I matches against India since 2017 and has picked nine wickets so far at an economy of 7.40. 1 for 14 runs is his best figure ever but England has high hopes from in the upcoming T20I and ODI series. He has also found a place in England’s 15-member squad for the ICC Champions Trophy 2025.
Chris Jordan is the only bowler across both teams to have over 20 wickets in the India versus England T20I rivalry. Although he is not part of the squad for the upcoming series, Jordan played 16 T20I games against India for England in a span of seven years, picking 24 wickets at an economy of 9.28.
His best figure against India in T20I was 4/27 in Birmingham 2022 when he picked the wickets of Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Harshal Patel and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Despite his efforts, that game was won by India.
