Kuldeep Yadav’s story is an unlikely one for Indian cricket – a left-arm wrist-spinner, the so-called “chinaman” bowler, breaking into a Test side and a format that had gone 82 years without one. Since his 2017 debut he has become the closest thing India has had to a middle-overs mystery weapon, formed one of white-ball cricket’s most feared spin pairings, and by 2026 was still adding to a wicket tally most seamers would envy. So if you’re searching Kuldeep Yadav stats, Kuldeep Yadav age, Kuldeep Yadav wife, his height, his net worth, his IPL team for 2026, or which state he actually belongs to, this piece covers all of it – not just the numbers, but how he got here.
Kuldeep Yadav Stats & Profile
| Attribute | Detail |
| Full Name | Kuldeep Yadav ( कुलदीप यादव ) |
| Nickname | Chinaman, Kuldeep |
| Date of Birth | 14 December 1994 |
| Age | 31 years (as of September 2026) |
| Birthplace | Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, India |
| Raised In | Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh |
| Height | 5 ft 6 in (168 cm) |
| Zodiac Sign | Sagittarius |
| Role | Bowler (left-arm wrist spin) |
| Batting Style | Left-handed |
| National Team | India (2017 to present) |
| Current Format(s) | ODI and T20I |
| Jersey Number | 23 (ODI and T20I) |
| Domestic Team | Uttar Pradesh (2009 to present) |
| IPL Team (2026) | Delhi Capitals |
| Marital Status | Married to Vanshika Chadha (m. 2026) |
Early Life & Background
14 December 1994, Unnao – that’s technically where Kuldeep was born, though Kanpur is home in every sense that matters, and it’s the city where he actually learned the game. His dad ran a brick-kiln business and, weirdly, wanted a fast bowler out of him. That’s why he ended up at a local academy at all. A coach there caught something off in his wrist one day, moved him toward spin, and somehow that turned into the left-arm wrist-spin trade he’s now built a whole career on.
None of it happened fast. Years of grinding through UP’s domestic circuit and the India Under-19 setup came before anyone outside Kanpur really knew his name. The 2014 Under-19 World Cup changed that – hat-trick, 14 wickets, top of the wicket-takers’ list, done. Scouts moved quick after that; Kolkata Knight Riders had him signed before the year ended, even if the actual playing time took a couple more seasons to show up. A decent Duleep Trophy run in 2016 kept selectors watching, and by March 2017 Anil Kumble was the one handing him his Test cap before the Dharamsala game against Australia.
Kuldeep Yadav Family Background
| Relation | Name | Details |
| Kuldeep Yadav’s Father | Ram Singh | Ran a brick-kiln business in Kanpur |
| Kuldeep Yadav’s Mother | Usha Yadav | Homemaker |
| Kuldeep Yadav’s Wife | Vanshika Chadha | Works with LIC; married March 2026 |
| Kuldeep Yadav’s Early Coach | Kapil Pandey | West End Cricket Academy, Kanpur |
| Kuldeep Yadav’s Test Cap Presenter | Anil Kumble | Presented on Test debut, March 2017 |
Kuldeep has always kept his family well away from the cameras – his parents and siblings aren’t public figures in the way some of his teammates’ families are. It was really only once word got out about his relationship with Vanshika Chadha, a childhood friend from Lucknow, in mid-2026, that his personal life started drawing any real attention.
How His Career Actually Unfolded
| Phase | Years | Notes |
| Junior Cricket & U-19 Breakout | 2012 to 2014 | Hat-trick and top wicket-taker (14) at the 2014 U-19 World Cup |
| IPL Arrival | 2014 to 2016 | Signed by Kolkata Knight Riders; limited early game time |
| International Debut | March 2017 | Test debut vs Australia, cap presented by Anil Kumble |
| Establishing Himself | 2017 to 2019 | ODI and T20I debuts; first of two ODI hat-tricks; twin five-fors in England in 2018-19 |
| The “Kul-Cha” Era | 2017 to 2021 | Paired with Yuzvendra Chahal as India’s go-to white-ball spin combination |
| Injury & Rebuild | 2019 to 2021 | Serious knee injury and surgery disrupted form and IPL game time |
| Delhi Capitals Revival | 2022 to 2023 | Rebuilt his IPL numbers with DC; key middle-overs partner for Ravindra Jadeja at the 2023 ODI World Cup |
| T20 World Cup Glory | 2024 | Part of India’s title-winning squad; finished as the tournament’s highest wicket-taker among India’s spinners |
| Peak Form Return | 2025 | India’s leading international wicket-taker for the calendar year; Impact Player of the Series vs South Africa |
| Current Phase | 2026 to present | Active across ODIs and T20Is; short county stint with Yorkshire; moved to Lucknow Super Giants for IPL 2027 |
2021 wasn’t kind to him. A knee injury that needed surgery took away most of the year, and at one point KKR didn’t play him a single time in an entire season – the kind of stretch where people quietly stop expecting a comeback. Delhi Capitals changed that story in 2022. He came back bowling with real pace and bounce behind it, and his IPL economy tells the tale on its own – over 70 in 2019, under 20 by his DC seasons.
Kuldeep Yadav Stats: International Career
| Format | Matches | Wickets | Average | Economy | Best Bowling | Status |
| Test | 17 | 76 | 22.42 | 3.53 | 5/40 | Active |
| ODI | 120 | 194 | 26.82 | 5.08 | 6/25 | Active |
| T20I | 54 | 95 | 13.74 | 6.95 | 5/17 | Active |
| First-Class | 52 | – | – | – | – | – |
A T20I average of 13.74 is genuinely elite for anyone who’s played that many games in the format, and his ODI strike rate – roughly a wicket every 31-32 balls – explains why captains keep throwing him the ball in the middle overs. What sets him apart from a lot of white-ball-only spinners is that he’s held his own in Tests as well, with an average in the low twenties, and of course, he’s still the only left-arm wrist-spinner to have ever played Test cricket for India.
Kuldeep Yadav’s Career-Defining Moments
| Milestone | Detail |
| First ODI Hat-trick | Vs Australia, Eden Gardens, September 2017 – only third Indian bowler ever to do it, after Chetan Sharma and Kapil Dev |
| Second ODI Hat-trick | Vs West Indies, Visakhapatnam, December 2019 – made him the first Indian bowler with two ODI hat-tricks |
| Best T20I Figures | 5/24 vs England, Manchester, 2018 |
| Best ODI Figures | 6/25 vs England, Trent Bridge, 2019 |
| Fastest Indian to 50 T20I Wickets | Reached the mark in 30 matches, beating Yuzvendra Chahal’s Indian record of 34 |
| 2024 T20 World Cup | Part of India’s winning squad; finished as the tournament’s top wicket-taker among India’s spin bowlers |
| 2025 Calendar Year | India’s leading international wicket-taker across formats (38 wickets) |
| Asia Cup 2025 vs UAE | 4 wickets for 7 runs in 2.1 overs; first T20I Player of the Match award in seven years |
| ODI Series vs South Africa (Dec 2025) | Named Impact Player of the Series after 9 wickets in 3 matches at 20.77 |
Kuldeep Yadav Records
| Record | Detail |
| First left-arm wrist-spin Test bowler for India | Debuted March 2017, ending an 82-year gap in the format for that bowling type |
| Only Indian with two ODI hat-tricks | Achieved against Australia (2017) and West Indies (2019) |
| Fastest Indian to 50 Men’s T20I wickets | 30 matches, ahead of Chahal, Bumrah, Ashwin and Bhuvneshwar Kumar |
| Best T20I bowling average among full members (as of his peak run) | 14.28, built largely on his record against the West Indies |
| U-19 World Cup Hat-trick (2014) | First Indian bowler to take a hat-trick at that tournament |
| Highest Indian wicket-taker, 2025 calendar year | 38 wickets, ahead of Mohammed Siraj and Varun Chakravarthy |
Kuldip Yadav IPL Career
| Years | Team | Notes |
| 2014 to 2015 | Kolkata Knight Riders (signed, limited game time) | Signed after standout 2014 U-19 World Cup |
| 2016 to 2021 | Kolkata Knight Riders (Player) | Breakout IPL seasons in 2018-19 before a knee injury disrupted his run |
| 2022 to 2026 | Delhi Capitals | Reworked action; retained for ₹13.25 crore ahead of both IPL 2025 and IPL 2026 |
| 2026 | Yorkshire (County Cricket) | Short-term deal for the One-Day Cup and part of the County Championship |
| 2027 to present | Lucknow Super Giants | Moved franchises after his Delhi Capitals stint ended |
To answer the specific question – yes, for IPL 2026, Kuldeep was with Delhi Capitals, retained for ₹13.25 crore, the exact figure they’d kept him for a year earlier too. He only left DC after that season wrapped up, and after a brief county spell with Yorkshire, he ended up at Lucknow Super Giants ahead of the 2027 auction.
Kuldeep Yadav Wife: Vanshika Chadha
For most of his career, Kuldeep barely spoke about his personal life at all. He did once joke in an interview that he wasn’t planning to marry a Bollywood actress, and that whoever he ended up with just needed to be someone who’d genuinely look after him and his family. Turns out that person was already in his life – Vanshika Chadha, a childhood friend from Lucknow who works with LIC and has been living in Melbourne, Australia.
| Attribute | Detail |
| Name | Vanshika Chadha |
| Profession | Works with LIC (Life Insurance Corporation of India) |
| Relationship | Childhood friends before the relationship became public |
| Engagement | Confirmed in 2025, ahead of an India tour of England |
| Wedding | 14 March 2026, in Mussoorie |
Their wedding card actually leaked online and went viral before the wedding even happened, which is a fairly common problem for well-known cricketers these days. The ceremony in Mussoorie had a good turnout of current and former players, but since then, Kuldeep’s gone right back to keeping married life mostly to himself – same as before.
Kuldeep Yadav Net Worth
Not one official number exists anywhere – just a mess of guesses that don’t quite agree with each other. Around 2023-24, most reports settled somewhere between ₹30-35 crore, call it $4-4.5 million, mostly from the central contract, his IPL paycheck, and a short list of endorsements. Since then his ₹13.25 crore retention fee, the 2024 T20 World Cup payout, the central contract still running, plus a slightly longer brand list, have pushed guesses closer to ₹60-80 crore – roughly $7-9 million – going into 2026. Kuldeep himself has never confirmed any of it, so really, take the number for what it is: a guess, same as it is for most cricketers.
On the endorsement side, he’s been the face of brands like Adidas, Oppo, Unacademy, and Zebronics, plus a few fantasy-sports apps and the occasional consumer or state-government campaign. But if you want the one number that’s actually verifiable, it’s his IPL price – auction and retention figures are public knowledge, unlike everything else.
Kuldeep Yadav Playing Style: What Made Him Different
Not many bowlers even try left-arm wrist spin. Fewer still make it hard to read after ten meetings, but that’s exactly what Kuldeep managed – batters who’d faced him plenty of times still couldn’t call it right. Most finger-spinners win with control; his whole thing was trickery, hiding the ball off his wrist and mixing in a googly that could pass for someone else’s bowling entirely.
Strange as it sounds, the injury actually made him better. Coming back with extra pace and steeper bounce cut down the easy runs batters used to get off him, and that alone explains most of the drop in his economy since the early KKR days. Past 30 now, and he’s still India’s first-choice spinner in white-ball cricket, still someone who can pick up a Test wicket when it matters.
Kuldeep Yadav’s Legacy in Indian Cricket
Looking back at it all, Kuldeep’s career is really two stories stitched together. There’s the bowler who broke an 82-year drought for left-arm wrist spin in India’s Test side, and then there’s the white-ball weapon who, paired with Yuzvendra Chahal, made opposition line-ups nervous through the late 2010s. The injury in between could easily have ended things quietly, but instead he came back sharper, rebuilt his IPL game almost from scratch, and played a big part in India lifting the T20 World Cup in 2024. If anything, he might be a better bowler now than the one who walked out at Dharamsala back in 2017 – and he’s clearly not done yet.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Born on 14 December 1994, Kuldeep Yadav age currently stands at 31 years (as of September 2026), and he turns 32 on 14 December 2026.
Kuldeep Yadav height is 5 ft 6 in (168 cm).
Kuldeep Yadav wife is Vanshika Chadha, a childhood friend from Lucknow who works with LIC; the couple married in Mussoorie on 14 March 2026.
Kuldeep Yadav jersey number is 23, worn in both ODI and T20I cricket for India.
Kuldeep Yadav IPL team 2026 is Delhi Capitals, who retained him for ₹13.25 crore, before he moved to Lucknow Super Giants the following season.
Kuldip Yadav is from which state comes up a lot in searches – he was born in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, and grew up in Kanpur, the state he represents in domestic cricket.
There’s no officially confirmed figure for Kuldeep Yadav net worth; unofficial estimates for 2026 place it roughly in the ₹60-80 crore range, built mainly around his IPL salary, BCCI contract, and endorsements.
As of September 2026, Kuldeep Yadav stats read 76 wickets in 17 Tests, 194 wickets in 120 ODIs, and 95 wickets in 54 T20Is for India.
Source: CricInfo
