Batters flex their muscles in record-breaking season of SMAT

The final of the 18th edition of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy encapsulated the tournament in its entirety. The eventual champions Jharkhand, batting first, piled on a staggering 262 for 3, an effort that comfortably sealed their maiden T20 title. The performance underlined where India's T20 batting game stands right now and showcased the vast reserves of talent brewing beneath the national setup.

The latest edition rewrote almost every major batting record in the tournament's 18-year history, highlighting the depth and productivity of India's domestic pipeline. Power hitting and fearless intent were on display throughout the competition, reflecting the evolving demands of modern T20 cricket.

The latter stages of the tournament coincided with the IPL 2026 auction, where uncapped Indian talents emerged as the headline acts. Rajasthan's Kartik Sharma and Uttar Pradesh's Prashant Veer attracted record-breaking bids for uncapped players, while Auqib Nabi and Mangesh Yadav also fetched prices north of five crores. These figures underlined how closely IPL franchises now value performances in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Once viewed primarily as a domestic steppingstone, the tournament is increasingly proving to be a breeding ground for India's next generation of T20 stars. A closer look reveals how the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy is steadily mirroring the Indian Premier League, and in many ways, shaping the future of India's national T20 setup.

Batting records torn apart in a run glutted SMAT 2025

The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy is now a barometer of India's white-ball batting depth, and the 2025 edition further strengthened it. At a tournament scoring rate of 8.59 runs per over, SMAT 2025 became the most batter friendly edition ever in the competition, edging past last season by the narrowest of margins. It also completed a telling hat-trick: three consecutive editions with an economy north of eight, underlining a clear and irreversible shift in approach.

Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy - most batting friendly editions

The batters filled in their boots hitting 20 individual centuries - the most ever in any T20 tournament easily bettering 17 from the T20 Blast in England in 2017, while the previous most in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy edition was 14 last year. Six-hitting followed suit. 1884 sixes were struck across the competition - a T20 record - even if the frequency dipped slightly (one every 17 balls, compared to every 15.5 in 2024).

Three teams crossed the 100-sixes mark: Punjab (136), Jharkhand (114) and Haryana (109). Only twice before had even one team managed this in an SMAT season. Punjab, in particular, operated on another level, hitting a six every 8.6 balls - the best rate ever by a team across any T20 tournament with eight or more matches.

Best balls/six ratio in a T20 competition

Punjab and Jharkhand lead the charge

Punjab were once again at the forefront of dynamic batting. In just ten innings, they crossed 200 seven times, made 192 and 188 in two others, and chased down 148 inside 14 overs in another - numbers that stack up with the most explosive teams in T20 history. Gujarat Titans and Punjab Kings made eight 200+ totals each in IPL 2025 but those came over 15 and 16 matches respectively while Birmingham Bears also made seven in T20 Blast 2022 in 15 games. Remarkably, even then, three of their 200-plus scores ended in defeats and one in a Super Over loss, a reminder of just how inflated the scoring environment was.

Across the tournament, Punjab scored at 11.24 runs per over, becoming the first team ever to breach the 11-runs-per-over mark in a T20 competition featuring at least eight matches. Champions Jharkhand weren't far behind, scoring at 10.36, the sixth-highest team rate in T20 history.

Highest scoring rate in a T20 tournament

Volume meets velocity

The batting boom wasn't limited to a few outliers. All top 20 run-getters crossed 300 runs, and 17 of them did so at a strike rate of 150 or more. Even the exceptions hovered close, with Haryana's Yashvardhan Jalal finishing at 148.50. In total, 85% of players with 300+ runs struck at 150+, the highest proportion ever recorded in a T20 tournament. The 2024 edition of the tournament comes a close second at 81.8%, nine players out of 11. To further highlight, how far ahead it is of ballpark figures only three other tournaments had a 60% of higher share of batters aggregating 300+ runs at 150+ strike rate at least 10 players aggregating 300+ runs): 64.7% in IPL 2024 (22/34), 60.6% in IPL 2025 (20/33), and 60% in MLC 2025 (6/10).

Strike-Rate of top 20 run-getters in SMAT 2025/26

A Young Man's Game

Perhaps the most telling theme of the season was earlier the coming of age of the younger batters. 14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi became the embodiment of a new Indian T20 archetype: fearless, high-intent, and technically equipped for relentless aggression. Six of the tournament's 20 centuries were scored by players aged under 23, the most in a single SMAT edition. Under-23 batters batting in the top seven averaged 27 at a strike rate of 140 - the first time their strike rate touched that mark, and second only to their 2023/24 average of 28.55.

They didn't just keep pace with senior players but outperformed most of them with the bat. That dominance translated quickly into opportunity. At the IPL 2026 auction, nine uncapped domestic players fetched bids exceeding INR 1 crore, all but Auqib Nabi aged 23 or below. The pipeline, clearly, is overflowing.

Major highlights from the tournament

517runs by Ishan Kishan is the third most by a batter in a single edition of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy behind 580 runs by Devdutt Padikkal in 2019 and 519 runs by Rohan Kadam in 2018, both for Karnataka. Kishan scored them at a strike rate of 197.32, the highest ever in an edition for anyone with 400+ runs.

Kishan's 101 in the finals was his fifth century in 62 innings in Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, the joint most for a player in the tournament alongside Abhishek Sharma. Abhishek's 148 off 52 balls against Bengal earlier in the season is the second highest individual score in the history of the tournament, only behind Tilak Varma's 151 against Meghalaya last year. Abhishek hit 16 sixes in that innings against Bengal, second most in the tournament after 17 by Punit Bisht for Meghalaya against Mizoram in Chennai in 2021.

304 runs and 18 wicketsby Player of the Tournament Anukul Roy makes him just the second player with the double of 300+ runs and 15+ wickets in a single edition of the tournament. The first to do so was Harshal Patel, who scored 374 runs and bagged 19 wickets for Haryana in 2019.

22 wickets each taken by Jharkhand's Sushant Mishra and Rajasthan's Ashok Sharma - the highest ever in a single edition of the competition. Both players were rewarded with IPL contacts: Mishra to Rajasthan Royals and Sharma to Gujarat Titans. The previous highest being Lukman Meriwala's 21 scalps in 2013/14, matched by Anshul Kamboj in 2025.

6/9 by Madhya Pradeh's Arshad Khan against Chandigarh in Jadavpur is now the best figures in Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, surpassing 6/13 each by Ravi Teja for Hyderabad against Chhattisgarh and Arsan Nagwaswalla for Gujarat against Railways, both in 2023.

4 There were four targets in excess of 220 successfully chased down in SMAT 2025 - there were only two such instances in the 18 previous editions. Jharkhand's successful chase of 236 against Punjab in Pune is now the highest successful chase in the history of the tournament.

Highest chases in SMAT