The International League T20 has only been around since 2023, but it’s already built a clear pecking order when it comes to boundary hitting. Alex Hales sits on top of the all-time fours chart, but the list of who has hit the most fours in a single ILT20 season tells a slightly different story. Here’s a breakdown of both, along with the context that explains why the numbers look the way they do.
Most Fours in ILT20
Alex Hales holds the record for the most fours in ILT20 history, with 126 across his three seasons with Desert Vipers and his move to Abu Dhabi Knight Riders. James Vince is close behind with 125. These are career totals through the end of Season 4 (2025-26), the most recent completed edition.
If you’re asking about a single season instead, the picture changes: Max Holden led the fours count in Season 4 with 41, well clear of anyone chasing him that year.
All-Time ILT20 Most Fours (Career)
| Rank | Player | Team(s) | Career Fours | Career Runs | Innings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alex Hales | Desert Vipers, Abu Dhabi Knight Riders | 126 | 1,405 | 46 |
| 2 | James Vince | Gulf Giants | 125 | 1,239 | 42 |
| 3 | Tom Banton | Dubai Capitals, Gulf Giants, MI Emirates | 107 | 1,081 | 35 |
| 4 | Muhammad Waseem | MI Emirates | 99 | 1,241 | 46 |
| 5 | Tom Kohler-Cadmore | Sharjah Warriorz | 92 | 1,049 | 37 |
| 6 | Johnson Charles | Sharjah Warriorz | 81 | 833 | 30 |
| 7 | Sikandar Raza | Dubai Capitals, Sharjah Warriorz | 61 | 858 | 38 |
| 8 | Kieron Pollard | MI Emirates | 57 | 885 | 29 |
Figures cover ILT20’s first four seasons (2023 through 2025-26). Season 5 is due to begin in November 2026, which will add fresh matches to these totals.
Why Hales leads: it isn’t just about longevity, though 46 innings across four seasons certainly helps. Hales has played the anchor-opener role for most of his ILT20 career, which means he’s faced more balls than almost anyone else in the competition and had more opportunities to work the ball into gaps.
His average of 33.45 and strike rate of 139.94 point to a batter who builds an innings rather than one who slogs from ball one, and that method naturally produces a high fours count over sixes. He’s the only player to pass 1,400 career runs in the league, and his 126 fours are the single largest share of any top-10 run-scorer’s total.
Vince’s case is almost identical in shape. He’s collected 125 fours from 42 innings for Gulf Giants, only one behind Hales, despite never having scored an ILT20 century. What Vince has instead is consistency: 11 half-centuries, the most of anyone in the competition’s top 10 run-scorers, built largely through the same kind of repeated boundary-finding that defines Hales’ game.
Neither player relies heavily on the six; that’s a notable contrast to a batter like Kieron Pollard, whose 57 fours actually sit behind his six count, reflecting a completely different approach to scoring.
Tom Banton’s 107 fours stand out for a different reason. He’s the only batter in the ILT20 top 10 with more than one century, and he reached those hundreds while playing for three different franchises across four seasons.
His fours total shows that even a more explosive, six-heavy batter like Banton (38 career sixes alongside those 107 fours) still does a large share of his scoring along the ground, particularly early in an innings before he opens up.
Muhammad Waseem, the highest-ranked UAE-born player on the run-scoring charts, has hit 99 fours from 46 innings, almost identical in matches played to Hales but with fewer overall fours. That gap reflects Waseem’s role as a more conservative, situation-dependent opener for MI Emirates compared to Hales’ consistent aggression from ball one.
Most Fours in a Single ILT20 Season
Career totals reward longevity. Single-season totals reward form, and Season 4 (2025-26) produced a different name at the top.
| Rank | Player | Team | Fours | Matches | Season Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Max Holden | Desert Vipers | 41 | 12 | 359 |
| 2 | Muhammad Waseem | MI Emirates | 34 | 13 | 370 |
| 3 | Shayan Jahangir | Dubai Capitals | 33 | 11 | 310 |
| 4 | Sam Curran | Desert Vipers | 29 | 12 | 397 |
| 5 | Tom Banton | MI Emirates | 29 | 13 | 327 |
| 6 | Jonny Bairstow | MI Emirates | 28 | 9 | 246 |
| 7 | Jordan Cox | Dubai Capitals | 27 | 11 | 321 |
| 8 | Johnson Charles | Sharjah Warriorz | 25 | 10 | 244 |
| 9 | Alex Hales | Abu Dhabi Knight Riders | 22 | 12 | 249 |
Season 4 table, final standings as of the tournament’s conclusion on January 4, 2026.
What’s notable here is that Max Holden, who doesn’t feature in the career top eight at all, led the whole tournament in fours for that single season. That’s the nature of a young league without a huge sample size behind it: a productive four or five weeks can put a player at the top of a season-long chart even without a long ILT20 track record.
It’s also a reminder that Alex Hales’ 22 fours in Season 4, while solid, was actually a relatively quiet campaign for him by his own career standards, since he’d already banked most of his 126-four career tally in the three seasons before that.
Why the Fours Count Matters as a Stat
Fours and sixes get lumped together a lot in T20 discussion, but they measure different things. A high six count usually reflects raw power-hitting and risk-taking, often from batters in the middle order looking to accelerate.
A high fours count, especially one built over a full season or career, tends to reflect a batter’s ability to consistently find gaps in the field, rotate the strike through the ball’s pace off the bat, and control an innings rather than simply attack.
That’s why Hales and Vince, ILT20’s two career leaders in fours, are also two of the more methodical top-order batters in the competition rather than out-and-out hitters. Their fours totals are a byproduct of playing more balls, in more matches, in a role built around occupying the crease.
Compare that to Pollard, whose six count outstrips his four count, and you get a clear picture of two different batting philosophies producing very different-looking scorecards for similar levels of overall impact.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who has hit the most fours in ILT20 history?
Alex Hales holds the all-time record with 126 fours, built across three seasons with Desert Vipers and a further campaign with Abu Dhabi Knight Riders, through the end of Season 4 (2025-26).
Who hit the most fours in a single ILT20 season?
Max Holden of Desert Vipers led the fours chart in Season 4 (2025-26) with 41, the highest single-season total recorded in the competition so far.
Does the most-fours leader also have the most runs?
Mostly, yes, but not always exactly in order. Hales leads both career runs (1,405) and career fours (126). However, in single-season terms, Max Holden topped the fours chart in 2025-26 without leading the runs table that year, since fours are only one part of an overall scoring total that also includes sixes and running between the wickets.
Final Word
The most fours in International League T20 history, at least for now, belongs to Alex Hales, but only just. James Vince is one boundary behind him on the all-time list, and both players are still active in the competition heading into Season 5.
What the numbers really show is a league still writing its own record book: unlike older, more established T20 leagues where the gap between the top run-scorer and the field can stretch into the hundreds, ILT20’s leaders are separated by the width of a single boundary shot. That makes the fours chart worth checking again once the next season gets underway.
