Chris Gayle 175*: The Highest Individual Score in IPL History

On April 23, 2013, a 33-year-old Jamaican left-hander walked out at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru and, over the next 66 deliveries, redrew the boundaries of what a Twenty20 innings could be. Chris Gayle's 175 not out for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Pune Warriors India remains, more than a decade later, the highest individual score in Indian Premier League history — and nobody has come within 17 runs of it.

What makes the innings extraordinary is not simply the number at the top of the scorecard. It is that this one knock collapsed four separate IPL records into a single evening: the highest score ever made, the fastest century the tournament has seen, the most sixes struck in one innings, and the platform for what was then the highest team total in IPL history. No other innings in eighteen seasons has bent the record books so far in one sitting. It stands as the single most dominant individual performance the competition has produced, and the gap between it and everything that has followed has, if anything, only grown more striking with time.

The Innings That Broke Every Ceiling

Seventeen balls to fifty, thirty to a hundred

Gayle did not build the innings so much as detonate it. He reached his half-century from 17 balls, then accelerated rather than consolidated. His century arrived off just 30 deliveries — the fastest hundred in IPL history, a record that still stands untouched as of IPL 2026. To put that in context, the fastest century in all of professional T20 cricket at the time was Gayle's own, and within the IPL no batter across the next thirteen seasons has matched the 30-ball mark.

The acceleration is the part that defies T20 logic. Most explosive innings follow a curve — a fast start, a middle-overs lull against spin, a final flourish. Gayle simply removed the lull. Having reached fifty in 17 balls, he reached his hundred 13 balls later, and then kept the throttle open. By the time the innings closed, he had faced 66 balls for his 175 not out — a strike rate of 265.15. He hit 17 fours and 13 sixes. Those 13 sixes were themselves an IPL single-innings record, and they accounted for 78 of his runs through the air alone.

A pitch, a ground, and a bowler's nightmare

The M. Chinnaswamy Stadium has long been one of the most batter-friendly grounds in world cricket — short square boundaries, a quick outfield, and the thin Bengaluru air that gives the ball that extra carry. On the night of the 175*, every one of those factors compounded. Gayle did not need to time the ball perfectly; a half-met drive cleared the rope, and a mis-hit pull still carried into the crowd. Pune Warriors India, a franchise that existed for only three IPL seasons, were simply bystanders. Their bowlers conceded boundaries to all parts of the ground, and Gayle showed no preference — straight, square, over cover, into the stands at long-on. The visiting attack had no plan that survived contact, and the dismissal never came. Gayle finished unbeaten, the rarest kind of T20 innings: one that ends only because the overs run out.

A team total that stood for eleven years

Gayle's assault carried RCB to 263 for 5, at the time the highest team total in IPL history. That record would stand for over a decade before the run-glut of the mid-2020s finally surpassed it — Sunrisers Hyderabad posting 287 for 3 in 2024. For eleven years, though, 263/5 was the ceiling, and it was built almost single-handedly: Gayle's 175 was 66.5% of his team's total, one of the highest proportions of a team innings ever contributed by a single batter in T20 cricket. Pune were bowled out for 133, handing RCB a 130-run victory — one of the most lopsided results the tournament had produced, and a margin that itself flirted with the record books. Gayle's method was almost confrontational in its simplicity: stand still, watch the ball, and hit it harder than anyone else dared. There were no reverse-sweeps, no ramps, no manufactured angles — just orthodox power applied with a violence the format had not previously demanded. It is why the innings has aged so well. The trick shots of later eras can look dated within a season or two, but a straight six off a length ball is timeless, and Gayle hit them by the dozen.

The Records, In Numbers

The clearest way to understand the 175* is to set it against the innings that chase it. Here are the highest individual scores in IPL history, and notice how far clear the top entry sits.

The gap between first and second is 17 runs — larger than the gap between second and eighth. That is the statistical signature of an outlier: not the best of a cluster, but a number sitting alone in its own weather system. Four of the eight entries, it is worth noting, were scored either by or against RCB — the franchise has been at the centre of more record-breaking individual carnage than any other.

The second table reframes the same innings through the lens of the records it set, all of which it held simultaneously on the night of April 23, 2013.

That final row matters too. Gayle did not merely produce one monstrous night; he is the most prolific six-hitter the tournament has ever known, finishing his IPL career with 357 sixes — a tally no active player is close to overtaking. The 175* was the peak of a career built entirely around clearing the rope, and it reframes the innings not as a fluke but as the logical summit of the most destructive batting method the league has seen.

What the 175 Means in IPL 2026

Thirteen years on, batting has changed almost beyond recognition. The impact-player rule, flatter pitches, shorter boundaries at several venues and a generation of hitters raised on power-first coaching have pushed team totals past 280 and made 250 a chaseable target rather than a fortress. And yet Gayle's individual record has survived all of it.

That survival is the most revealing fact of all. In an era engineered for run-scoring — where the league average first-innings total in recent seasons sits far higher than it did in 2013 — no batter has produced a single innings to beat 175. Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Jos Buttler and the modern wave of openers have flirted with the territory, posting blistering 140s and 150s, but the combination Gayle managed that night — surviving twenty overs while striking at 265 — has proven almost impossible to replicate. Power without an end point is rare; power that lasts a full innings is rarer still. Modern hitters tend to burn brightest in the powerplay and then either fall to the aggression or are rotated by the impact-sub strategy; Gayle's genius was that he never needed a second gear because his first was already faster than anyone else's top.

This is also where context engines like CricMind's Oracle earn their keep. When the Oracle models a chase or a powerplay, the 175* sits in its historical distribution as the extreme tail — the ceiling that tells the model how high a single batter can drag a total before the maths breaks. Knowing that ceiling is what lets a prediction engine separate a genuinely improbable scoreline from one that is merely rare, and it is why the 2013 innings still functions as a reference point in every win-probability calculation built on IPL data.

For RCB specifically, the innings is woven into franchise identity. The same era produced AB de Villiers' 133* and a young Virat Kohli maturing into the league's most consistent run-machine — three of the most dangerous batters of the decade sharing one dressing room. The Chinnaswamy of the mid-2010s was cricket's most dangerous batting address, and Gayle's 175 was its loudest statement — a reminder, every time RCB bat at home, of what that ground has witnessed. When RCB finally lifted their maiden title in 2025, it was on the foundation of a batting culture that the Gayle years had established more than a decade earlier.

Three Takeaways

• One innings, four records. Gayle's 175* simultaneously set the marks for highest score, fastest century, most sixes in an innings, and the highest team total — a concentration of records no other IPL innings has matched.
• The outlier has outlasted the era built to beat it. Despite flatter pitches, shorter boundaries and the impact-player rule inflating totals across IPL 2026, the 175* has stood unbeaten for thirteen seasons — proof that sustained power across twenty overs is the hardest feat in T20.
• Records frame predictions. The 175* is not just nostalgia; it is the statistical ceiling that prediction models like the Oracle use to calibrate just how far a single batter can move a match.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the highest individual score in IPL history?

Chris Gayle's 175 not out for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Pune Warriors India on April 23, 2013, is the highest individual score in IPL history. He faced 66 balls and hit 17 fours and 13 sixes at a strike rate of 265.15.

Has anyone come close to beating Gayle's 175?

No. The second-highest score is Brendon McCullum's 158* from the inaugural 2008 match, 17 runs adrift. No batter in the thirteen seasons since 2013 has scored more than 140 in a single IPL innings, leaving Gayle's record comfortably intact heading into IPL 2026.

How quickly did Gayle reach his century?

Gayle reached his hundred off just 30 balls — the fastest century in IPL history. That record, like the 175 itself, still stands and has never been challenged within the league.

How many sixes did Gayle hit in the 175*?

He struck 13 sixes in the innings, a single-innings IPL record at the time. Across his full IPL career, Gayle hit 357 sixes — the most by any player in the tournament's history.

What was the team total and result of that match?

RCB scored 263 for 5, then the highest team total in IPL history (surpassed by Sunrisers Hyderabad's 287/3 in 2024). Pune Warriors were bowled out for 133, giving RCB a 130-run victory.

Why has the record survived in a higher-scoring era?

Modern conditions favour run-scoring through flatter pitches, shorter boundaries and the impact-player rule, yet no batter has matched Gayle's feat of striking at 265 across a full innings. Brief explosions are common; sustaining that intensity for twenty overs remains the rarest skill in T20.

Which franchise does the record belong to?

The innings was played for Royal Challengers Bangalore at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, cementing the venue's reputation as the most dangerous batting ground of the mid-2010s and tying the record permanently to RCB's history.