India's top 5 wicket-takers in the Champions Trophy ft. Sachin Tendulkar

Team India's next assignment, the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy, presents a formidable challenge to Rohit Sharma and company. Placed alongside Bangladesh, New Zealand, and arch-rivals Pakistan in Group A of the tournament, the Men in Blue will have to be at their best in all the matches to come out on top at the end of it.

Gautam Gambhir's men, however, go into the tournament on the back of two significant white-ball victories - 4-1 and 3-0 against England in a T20I and ODI series, respectively. The drubbing they accorded to their opponents in the latter is bound to give India a lot of confidence and momentum heading into the ICC event.

While the batters will have to be on top of their games throughout this tournament, India's bowlers will be the ones tasked with dismantling their opponents. Naturally, then, they have selected a core group of eight bowlers - five of whom are spinners - for this tournament, being played in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

In this listicle, we take a look at India's top five wicket-takers in the history of this tournament.

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#5 Bhuvneshwar Kumar - 13 wickets

Swing bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar comes fifth on this list with 13 wickets. Unfortunately, Kumar does not get picked to play for India anymore, although he remains a force to be reckoned with for Uttar Pradesh in domestic cricket. Kumar played 10 matches in two editions of the tournament - 2013 and 2017.

His average in this tournament is an impressive 25.19 while his economy rate is even better at 4.30. Kumar went through the rigmarole of increasing his pace in the middle of his career, and came out at the other end as a changed bowler, as seen in his performances for the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the Indian Premier League. He was one of the key members of the SRH side that won the 2016 IPL, ending as the highest-wicket taker with 23 scalps.

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#4 Sachin Tendulkar - 14 wickets

Interestingly, it is batting legend Sachin Tendulkar who comes fourth on our list, having picked up 14 wickets in his Champions Trophy career. The maestro competed in six editions of this tournament, from its inception in 1998 to 2009. He was quite a handy slow bowler, who picked up 154 wickets in his ODI career.

Tendulkar was renowned for being able to bowl a mixture of leg-spin, off-spin, and even medium-pace if asked by his skipper to do so. The gifted batter is known widely for leading India to victory in the 1993 Hero Cup semifinal with his bowling. South Africa needed six runs to win, but Tendulkar conceded just two in the final over of the game to hand India a win by two runs.

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#3 Harbhajan Singh - 14 wickets

The iconic Harbhajan Singh redefined off-break bowling to the world in his prime, and comes third on our list after having taken 14 wickets in 13 Champions Trophy matches. Harbhajan played his last ODI for India in 2015, but he eventually retired from the sport in 2021. He ended up with 269 wickets in this format of the game.

Harbhajan had an average of 35.42 in the Champions Trophy, as well as an economy rate of 3.96. The Punjab spinner was a wily customer who had a lot of variations up his sleeve, including that of the 'doosra' which was perfected by his Pakistani counterpart Saqlain Mushtaq and was known to go the other way after pitching, that is, away from the right-handed batter.

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#2 Zaheer Khan - 15 wickets

Former speedster Zaheer Khan, who was for some time India's answer to Pakistan's deadly Wasim Akram, comes second on this list with 15 wickets. He picked up his wickets in nine matches, in which he conceded just 368 runs.

Zaheer's average in the Champions Trophy is an impressive 24.53 and his economy rate is an even better 4.60. Interestingly, he comes second on this list despite having played just two editions of this tournament - 2000 and 2002.

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#1 Ravindra Jadeja - 16 wickets

All-rounder Ravindra Jadeja leads the charts with 16 wickets, which is the most for India in this tournament. Jadeja is known as a force to be reckoned with in limited-overs cricket, given how handy he can be with the ball in the middle overs when opposition batters look to sneak in singles and doubles to rotate the strike.

A protegee of the late Shane Warne at the Rajasthan Royals, Jadeja has played 10 matches in the Champions Trophy so far and picked up his wickets at an average of 25.18 and an economy rate of 4.85. His best figure of 5/36 came against the West Indies at the Oval in the 2013 edition of the tournament, which India won.