Five-Wicket Hauls in Cricket: What Is a 'Fifer' and Who Has the Most?

A five-wicket haul — also called a 'five-for', 'fifer', or 'five wickets' — is taking five or more wickets in a single innings. It is considered the bowling equivalent of a batting century: a benchmark achievement that marks an outstanding individual performance within a match. While batting centuries are measured against a total runs target, five-wickets is a simpler absolute threshold that applies equally to a team of 20 wickets (a full 10-wicket innings each side). A bowler who regularly takes five-wicket hauls in Test cricket is considered elite; accumulating multiple fifers over a career is the mark of a genuinely great Test bowler.

Records for Most Five-Wicket Hauls in Test Cricket

Muttiah Muralitharan holds the record for the most five-wicket hauls in Test cricket: 67 five-fors across his 133-Test career. This means he took five or more wickets in a single innings in 67 of his Test matches — an extraordinary rate of more than one five-for every two Tests. Shane Warne is second with 37 five-wicket hauls in 145 Tests. Anil Kumble of India (35 five-wicket hauls) is third, and Richard Hadlee of New Zealand — who retired in 1990 — took 36 in just 86 Tests. Hadlee's rate (36 in 86 Tests vs Muralitharan's 67 in 133) demonstrates that quality rather than longevity alone drives the record: Hadlee averaged roughly one five-for every 2.4 Tests. In pace bowling, Glenn McGrath (29 five-fors) and Wasim Akram (25) hold the highest totals.

Ten-Wicket Hauls: Taking Wickets in Both Innings

A ten-wicket match haul — taking five or more wickets in both innings of the same Test match — is even rarer than a single five-wicket haul. Muralitharan also holds the record for most ten-wicket match hauls: 22. Jim Laker of England took 10 wickets in a single innings (10 for 53) and 19 wickets in the match against Australia in the 1956 Ashes — a record that has never been approached. Taking all 10 wickets in a single innings has only happened twice in Test history (Laker in 1956 and Anil Kumble — 10 for 74 against Pakistan in Delhi in 1999). Both remain among the most exceptional individual bowling performances in the sport's history.

Five-Wicket Hauls in ODI and T20 Cricket

Five-wicket hauls occur in ODI cricket but are far rarer than in Tests since an ODI bowler bowls a maximum of 10 overs (60 balls) compared to a Test bowler who can bowl unlimited overs. Muralitharan leads the ODI five-wicket haul record with 10, followed by Waqar Younis (13) and Wasim Akram (6). In T20 International cricket, a five-wicket haul is extremely rare — bowlers only bowl 4 overs maximum (24 balls), and taking five wickets requires an exceptional spell against aggressive batters who score rapidly. A T20 five-wicket haul is sometimes called a 'T20 fifer' and is considered an even greater achievement than its ODI equivalent because of the extreme time constraint.

Why the Fifer Is the Bowler's Equivalent of a Century

The five-wicket haul is considered the bowling equivalent of a batting century for several structural reasons. Both represent a clear threshold — 100 runs or 5 wickets — that separates a good performance from a great one. Both require sustained excellence over multiple consecutive actions (scoring 100 consecutive runs vs. dismissing five consecutive batters). Both are tracked individually in scorecards and career statistics as separate milestones. And both carry a cultural weight within cricket — a batter approaching 90 draws as much crowd attention as one approaching 100; a bowler on four wickets creates the same tension. The parallel is imperfect (a bowler can take 5 wickets in far fewer balls than a batter takes to score 100) but the cultural equivalence is embedded in cricket's language and celebrations.