The SMAT 2025-26 final round will take place on December 8.
The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT) 2025-26, India’s premier domestic T20 competition, enters its decisive final round on Monday. The race for the eight-team Super League is heating up. Four teams, Mumbai, Andhra, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan, have already qualified. Let’s take a group-wise look at how the SMAT 2025-26 qualification scenario will pan out.
Defending champions Mumbai and Andhra from Group A have already stormed into the SMAT 2025-26 Super Leagues phase. The two teams will aim to top the group, with Mumbai locking horns with Odisha and Andhra taking on last year’s runners-up Vidarbha at the same venue – Lucknow.
For Kerala, Railways, and Odisha, their hopes have come to an end as they can manage to reach a maximum of 14 points. The top teams are comfortably seated at 20, with at least one fixture remaining.
The competition in Group B is stiff and wide open, with six teams vying for two crucial spots in SMAT 2025-26. Hyderabad are at the top of the table and is the only team with five victories in the group. They will need an outright win to advance to the next phase. But it may come down to the Net Run Rate (NRR) if Rajat Patidar-led Madhya Pradesh and Goa secure a win in their respective fixtures. For now, Hyderabad will lock horns against Chandigarh, who have won just two of their six matches and are placed seventh on the eight-team table.
Madhya Pradesh and Goa are second and third with four wins each and will potentially battle it out for the remaining spot when they square off against Jammu & Kashmir and Maharashtra, respectively. Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Jammu & Kashmir, who are locked at 12 points, have a mathematical chance to advance to the next stage. Meanwhile, Bihar remains the only winless team in the Elite division of SMAT 2025-26 after six matches, eyeing to avoid relegation, along with Himachal Pradesh, Services and Tripura, who all have just one win apiece.
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In Group C, the SMAT 2025-26 qualification scenario is more straightforward but tighter than ever. Four teams – Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, and Bengal – are all tied at 16 points each. With Haryana set to face off against Bengal, and Punjab battling Gujarat later in the day, it becomes a virtual semi-final. However, the swashbuckling opener Abhishek Sharma is set to miss the match as he joins the India team ahead of the IND vs SA T20I series.
Abhishek’s absence could hurt the team the most, considering he is the third-highest run-getter of the competition. With 304 runs at an average of 50.66 and with a jaw-dropping strike rate of 249.18, he made a hundred and two half-centuries.
Rajasthan and Jharkhand are among the four teams that have already qualified for the SMAT 2025-26 Super League stage, remaining unbeaten in the tournament so far. The two sides will collide against each other in their final group stage clash in Ahmedabad to decide the table topper.
On the other hand, the three-time champions, Tamil Nadu, are placed seventh and will look to avoid finishing last. Delhi are third with just three wins, while Karnataka managed to win only two games.
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