T20I series record chase: Varun Chakravarthy falls one short as Jason Holder’s 15 still stands

Fifteen wickets in five games: the bar Jason Holder set

Fifteen wickets in five matches. That’s the kind of number you expect from a long Test tour, not the shortest international format. Yet Jason Holder hit that mark in the 2022 West Indies–England series, and the record still hasn’t budged. His run ended with a flourish too: a series-deciding night in Barbados where he ripped out four wickets in four balls to seal the deal. In a format built for big hits, Holder turned the spotlight back on the ball.

To understand how outrageous that return is, think about the math. In a five-match bilateral slate, a frontline bowler can send down a maximum of 20 overs. Take 15 wickets across that—you're averaging a wicket roughly every eight balls. That’s elite strike-rate territory, especially when you’re bowling at both ends of the innings: setting the tone in the powerplay and closing it out at the death.

Holder’s record doubles as a case study in T20 craft. New-ball wobble, back-of-length hits, cutters into the pitch, yorkers when the field spreads—he showed the full menu. England’s batting lineup wasn’t short on firepower in 2022, but the West Indies all-rounder kept them guessing all series long. His 15 stands as the benchmark for bilateral dominance.

The chase pack: near-misses, new names, and a widening map

The pursuit of that mark has been lively, and most recently, painfully close. India’s Varun Chakravarthy bagged 14 wickets in five innings against England in 2025—one shy of history. His calling card is deception: subtle changes of pace and release, and the ball that seems to leave the hand the same way but behaves differently off the pitch. Batters picked a line and a length; he kept changing the rules.

Chakravarthy’s near-miss sits alongside a quieter but equally impressive return from African associate cricket. In 2019, Malawi’s Sami Sohail took 14 wickets in seven innings against Mozambique. That kind of consistency over a full series is no accident. It takes repeatable skills, discipline at both ends of the innings, and the nerve to keep attacking fields even when the ball is disappearing every other over.

New Zealand’s Ish Sodhi also features on the roll call with 13 wickets in five innings during a 2021 clash with Australia. Leg-spinners thrive in T20 when they land a hard length and turn the ball late, and Sodhi has made a career out of drawing big swings into big mistakes. Against an Australian lineup that likes to hit straight and hard, he found enough drift and bite to force mishits and miscues in the deep.

Rounding out the five, Japan’s Charles Hinze logged 13 wickets in five innings against Mongolia in 2024—a snapshot of how wide the game now stretches. Bigger footprints mean more bilateral series, more specialized roles, and more chances for bowlers from emerging teams to crash lists that used to be closed circles. It’s not just the traditional powers writing these chapters anymore.

Here are the top returns in a bilateral T20I series so far:

1. Jason Holder (West Indies) – 15 wickets in 5 innings vs England, 2022
2. Sami Sohail (Malawi) – 14 wickets in 7 innings vs Mozambique, 2019
3. Varun Chakravarthy (India) – 14 wickets in 5 innings vs England, 2025
4. Ish Sodhi (New Zealand) – 13 wickets in 5 innings vs Australia, 2021
5. Charles Hinze (Japan) – 13 wickets in 5 innings vs Mongolia, 2024

What ties these runs together? A few common threads. First, role clarity: each bowler owned specific phases—powerplay, middle overs, or death—and squeezed them. Second, variation: pace off, cross-seamers, scrambled seams, wide yorkers, and for the spinners, different release points and trajectories. Third, repeatability: it’s one thing to spring a surprise; it’s another to win the same battle across a five-match swing when batters have tape, plans, and counters.

Conditions matter, but less than you’d think. Flatter pitches and short sides push economies up, yet wickets still fall when bowlers win lengths. The best returns often come from hitting a heavy back-of-length that makes the pull a risk and the drive a gamble, or from spinning the ball just late enough that a slog-sweep turns into a top edge. Even in high-scoring games, those little margins add up over a series.

The format also shapes the ceiling. With only four overs per match, a quick burst of three-wicket hauls can stack numbers in a hurry, but the real separator is durability—turning twos and threes into a drumbeat across the week. That’s why these lists skew toward bowlers who can operate in at least two phases: new ball plus middle for seamers, middle plus death for spinners comfortable with pace-off under pressure.

There’s a psychological layer, too. Once a bowler starts a series hot, batters go into survival mode early and attack elsewhere. That creates more chances: the desperate swipe before a timeout, the slog against the wind, the panic single that turns into a run-out pressure point for the next wicket. Momentum is real in T20, and bowling momentum hits like a riptide.

Records in short formats often feel fragile—one freak night and someone’s at the top. Holder’s 15 has survived because it mixed the spectacular with the steady. Chakravarthy showed that the number is reachable, while Sohail, Sodhi, and Hinze proved it’s not limited to one style, one region, or one tier of international cricket. The door is open. The next five-match showdown will tempt more bowlers to walk through it.