The Fifer: Cricket's Most Celebrated Bowling Milestone
Taking five wickets in a single innings — a 'fifer' or 'five-for' — is Test cricket's most celebrated bowling achievement. How it became so important, who has taken the most, and which fifers changed the course of history.
Why Five Wickets?
The significance of five wickets in an innings is largely conventional — there is no specific law that distinguishes five from four or six wickets — but cricket tradition has elevated it to the sport's primary individual bowling milestone. The choice of five as the threshold reflects the match arithmetic of a ten-wicket innings: five wickets represents exactly half the batting side, a threshold that signals a dominant bowling performance. In Test cricket scorecards, a bowler who takes five wickets or more has their figures printed in bold; the achievement appears on the player's permanent statistical record as a separate category. A bowler with 50 career five-wicket hauls is considered to have reached the highest elite of their discipline.
Most Fifers in Test History
Muthiah Muralitharan holds the record for most five-wicket hauls in Test cricket — 67 times across 133 Tests. Shane Warne took 37, Anil Kumble 35, and Richard Hadlee 36. In pace bowling, Richard Hadlee's 36 from 86 Tests is remarkable for the frequency relative to matches played. Glenn McGrath took 29; Curtly Ambrose 22. Among active or recent players, James Anderson had 37 five-wicket hauls in Test cricket — the most by any English fast bowler — and Stuart Broad had 20. The concentration of five-wicket hauls among spin bowlers reflects the advantage spinners have over multiple sessions on turning pitches, where a single session can yield five wickets on a deteriorating surface.
Ten Wickets in a Match
A ten-wicket match haul — ten or more wickets across both innings of a Test — is the rarest individual bowling achievement in the format. Only 42 players have achieved this as of 2026. The record is Muralitharan, who took ten or more wickets in a single Test 22 times. Jim Laker's 19 wickets for 90 runs in the 1956 Ashes at Old Trafford — nine in the second innings alone — remains the most extraordinary performance in Test history. Taking ten wickets in the same Test innings (all ten, not just ten across both) has happened only once in Test history: Jim Laker's 10/53 in England's second innings against Australia in 1956.
Famous Fifers That Changed History
Bob Willis's 8/43 at Headingley in 1981 won an Ashes Test from an apparently impossible position and is among cricket's most famous bowling performances. Glenn McGrath's 8/24 against Pakistan in 2004 — the best ever by an Australian — was taken in 80 balls. Devon Malcolm's 9/57 against South Africa at The Oval in 1994, taken after Malcolm was hit by a bouncer and told teammates he was going to 'kill' the South African batsmen, is one of the most dramatic fifers in terms of its emotional context. Waqar Younis's 7/76 against England in 1992 — with reverse swing in the World Cup Final context — demonstrated what a fifer in a tournament final could mean.
Fifers in Women's Cricket
Women's Test cricket, despite having fewer matches, has produced exceptional bowling performances. Cathryn Fitzpatrick of Australia took 60 wickets in 13 Tests and was considered as destructive in women's cricket as any fast bowler in the men's game. Sophie Ecclestone's left-arm spin has taken fifers in Tests and T20I cricket for England. The Women's game has historically been less stat-tracked than the men's, but increased media coverage from 2018 onwards has made women's bowling records more visible to cricket audiences.