Rajasthan Royals starVaibhav Sooryavanshi was named captain of the Bihar men’s cricket team for the opening two matches of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2026.
The Bihar Cricket Association (BCA) announced a 17-member squad on Friday.
Named after India’s former Test cricketer Syed Mushtaq Ali and organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the SMAT is India’s premier domestic men’s T20 cricket tournament for State and institutional teams.
Running since 2006, the upcoming season will be the 19th edition of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. It will start on November 14 and end on December 6.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s Bihar are in Elite Group B for SMAT 2026 with Saurashtra, Railways, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and three-time winners Tamil Nadu
Bihar open their campaign against Saurashtra on November 14 before taking on Railways a couple of days later.
This will mark Vaibhav’s first stint as captain in an official match, although he has previously served as vice-captain of Bihar in the Ranji Trophy and East Zone in the Duleep Trophy.
The teenager also had a brief taste of captaincy during the Duleep Trophy semi-final, when he took over the reins after East Zone skipper Ishan Kishan temporarily left the field.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was the leading run-scorer in IPL 2026, making 776 runs at a strike rate of 237.30. He became the youngest player in history to win the Orange Cap.
Those performances earned him an India call-up, and he became the country’s youngest international cricketer on his T20I debut against England in Manchester in July.
He has been a constant presence in India’s T20I setup since and also became the youngest player to score a fifty in the format at the senior level during the Men in Blue’s tour of Zimbabwe.
The teenager was recently part of India’s squad which beat New Zealand 3-2 in a bilateral T20 series away from home.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi holds multiple SMAT records.
In 2024, he became the youngest player to ever appear in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy match at the age of 13. Last year, he became the youngest player to ever score a century in the tournament after slamming an unbeaten 108 against Maharashtra.
Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2026 Bihar squad
Bihar cricket team: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi (captain), Suraj Kashyap (vice-captain), Alok Kumar, Ayush Loharuka (wicket-keeper), Altamash Ashraf, Param Kumar Singh, Anmol Kumar (wicket-keeper), Ritwik Raj, Mayank Kumar, Raghvendra Pratap, Ashish Kumar, Vasudev Pratap Singh, Mohammad Izhar, Amod Yadav, Prashant Singh, Nawaz Khan, Himanshu Singh.
Subject to fitness: Mangal Mahour, Shakib Hussain.
