14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavasnhi has been named Bihar's vice-captain for the first two rounds of the upcoming Ranji Trophy 2025-26 season that begins on October 15. The southpaw will be deputizing for skipper Sakibul Gani. The appointments have been made two days prior to the start off the Ranji season after the Bihar Cricket Association (BCA) fastly had to appoint a selector, on an ad-hoc basis, to join a two-member team following BCCI's instructions. The Board has been told to appoint a five-member selection panel sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile, Suryvanshi's promotion to vice-captaincy has come after his heroics for India Under-19 on the tour of Australia, where the southpaw provided quick starts at the top. The 14-year-old also smashed a 78-ball ton in the first four-day match in Brisbane and finished as the second-highest run scorer of the multi-day series, smashing 133 in three innings, as India clinched the series 2-0.
Advertisement
Also Read:Â IPL 2026: IPL 2026 auction likely to be held on December 15, retention deadline on November 15
Prior to this, Suryavanshi was also in a rich vein of form against England, scoring 143, the fastest hundred in youth one-dayers, in Worcester in July. In five games, the Royals opener scored 355 runs in five games at an impressive strike rate of 174.01, convincingly ending the series as the highest run-scorer of the series. The 14-year-old has just played five first-class games since his debut in January 2024 as a 12-year-old. He has scored just 100 runs in 10 innings, with a best score of 41. Under 19-commitments have made the southpaw lose out on a consecutive run of matches in India's first-class competition.
Earlier this year, Suryavanshi grabbed the spotlight in the IPL 2025 season by becoming the youngest centurion in men's T20s when he smashed 101 off just 38 balls against GT in Jaipur. The southpaw featured in seven games and scored 252 runs at an astonishing strike rate of 206.55. The 14-year-old is unlikely to feature for the whole Ranji 2025-26 season as he's also in contention to be in India's squad for the Under-19 World Cup in 2026.
Also Read:Â Women's ODI World Cup: Can India still make it to semis after successive losses?
Bihar Ranji Trophy 2025-26 squad
Piyush Kumar Singh, Bhashkar Dubey, Sakibul Gani (capt), Vaibhav Suryavanshi (vice-capt), Arnav Kishor, Ayush Loharuka, Bipin Saurabh, Amod Yadav, Nawaz Khan, Sakib Hussain, Raghvendra Pratap Singh, Sachin Kumar Singh, Himanshu Singh, Khalid Alam, Sachin Kumar
