MS Dhoni breaks world record for most stumpings in international cricket

With 134 stumpings to his name, Indian captain MS Dhoni now holds the world record for effecting the most number of stumpings in international cricket. The 33-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman overtook Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara when he stumped Mitchell Johnson off the bowling of off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin in the ongoing Test match against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

While Sangakkara has played 574 matches, he has only been a wicket-keeper in 450 of them. Sri Lanka’s Romesh Kaluwitharana, Pakistan’s Moin Khan and Australia’s Adam Gilchrist complete the top 5.

Despite leading the list by a huge margin in terms of the number of total dismissals (998 as against Gilchrist’s 905 who is second in the list), former South African wicketkeeper-batsman Mark Boucher features lower down in the list of stumpings. It could be due to a couple of reasons:

1. Boucher hardly had any good spinner to keep wickets, which explains his 15th spot with only 46 stumpings to his name.
2. South Africa played a major share of their cricket on pitches that didn’t aid spin. In addition to it, the pacers always had a lion’s share of wickets.

It also explains the domination of subcontinental wicket-keepers (7 out of 10) in the list.

Player Country Matches Innings Stumpings MS Dhoni India 389 460 134 Kumar Sangakkara Sri Lanka 450 (574) 485 133 Romesh Kaluwitharana Sri Lanka 238 270 101 Moin Khan Pakistan 288 327 93 Adam Gilchrist Australia 396 485 92 Kamran Akmal Pakistan 261 303 85 Ian Healy Australia 287 392 68 Mushfiqur Rahim Bangladesh 221 240 67 Bert Oldfield Australia 54 101 52 Nayan Mongia India 184 215 52 Note: Stats updated till December 27, 2014.