A month ago, he was a standby player.
In the Duleep Trophy 2025 squad, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was named in the reserves — six names listed below the main fifteen, the players who get called if someone gets injured, the players who train with the squad and watch the matches from the dugout without being on the field. Last year’s East Zone vice-captain was Abhimanyu Easwaran — 113 first-class appearances, multiple India A captaincy stints, one of the most experienced domestic cricketers in Bengal cricket.
This year, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s Duleep Trophy 2026 vice-captaincy is the story. The standby of twelve months ago is now the vice-captain. Easwaran — deliberately, specifically, according to the selectors — was not considered for the role this time. The fifteen-year-old from Tajpur in Samastipur, Bihar, who has played eight first-class matches and averages 17.25 in the format, has been handed the deputy’s armband for one of India’s most prestigious domestic red-ball competitions.
The Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 vice-captain story is about more than just a leadership title. It is about the specific long-term plan that East Zone’s selectors have for a player they believe will eventually captain India. The Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 appointment came alongside Ishan Kishan’s captaincy announcement — a squad that also includes Mohammed Shami, Mukesh Kumar and Abhimanyu Easwaran as the experience, and Sooryavanshi as the future the selectors are building toward.
The Appointment — What the Selectors Said
The specific question that the Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 vice-captain announcement generated immediately was the obvious one: why him over Easwaran?
Abhimanyu Easwaran has 113 first-class appearances. He has captained Bengal in the Ranji Trophy. He has captained India A. He was East Zone’s vice-captain in the Duleep Trophy 2025 squad. In any normal selection logic, he should be the automatic choice for the deputy’s role again.
The East Zone selectors chose differently. And they explained exactly why.
Manish Vardhan — the former cricketer who represents Jharkhand on the East Zone selection committee — gave Cricinfo the key quote: “We are not thinking about the present alone.”
Not thinking about the present alone. That sentence is the entire rationale. The Sooryavanshi vice-captaincy is not about what East Zone needs in August 2026 to win the Duleep Trophy. It is about what Indian cricket needs from Sooryavanshi across the next fifteen years. Leadership experience — the specific understanding of what it means to be responsible for a team rather than just your own performance — is something that comes from doing it rather than from watching others do it.
Pravanjan Mullick — the former Odisha player and the state’s current selector-coach — went further with the context: “Ishan is the captain and, as wicketkeeper, he is involved in every phase of the game. This gives Vaibhav an opportunity to understand leadership without putting the responsibility of captaining the side on him. We want him to grow, maybe one day he could even captain India. That’s the thought behind giving him the vice-captaincy.”
Maybe one day he could even captain India.
From a state selector. About a fifteen-year-old. After eight first-class matches and an average of 17.25.
That is not a wild prediction dressed up as a development plan. That is a development plan delivered with unusual directness by people who have watched Sooryavanshi closely enough to believe the ceiling is genuinely that high.
Why Easwaran Was Skipped — The Deliberate Decision
The Cricinfo report on the appointment was unusually specific: Easwaran was deliberately not chosen as vice-captain. Not overlooked. Not passed over because someone was unavailable. Deliberately excluded from consideration for the role.
The reason — reading between the lines of what the selectors said publicly — appears to be straightforward. Easwaran does not need leadership development at this stage of his career in the same way. He has captained Bengal. He has captained India A. He knows what the job requires from doing it repeatedly. Giving him another vice-captaincy at 31 in a domestic tournament is not a development opportunity — it is just another title.
Sooryavanshi at 15 needs something different. He needs to understand what it means to be in a leadership position in a serious cricket environment without having the full weight of captaincy on him. As vice-captain, he watches Kishan make decisions. He is consulted. He is responsible without being solely responsible. The gap between being a player and being a captain is not crossed in one step — and the vice-captaincy is the specific intermediate step that East Zone’s selectors have given him.
His previous experience with leadership is also more substantial than it appears from the outside. He was named Bihar vice-captain for the Ranji Trophy at 14 years old. That appointment was also considered premature by some observers at the time. He was 14. He was vice-captain of a senior state Ranji Trophy side. The pattern — Sooryavanshi being given leadership responsibility significantly earlier than his age or first-class record would conventionally justify — is consistent across Bihar and now East Zone.
The Red-Ball Question — The Challenge Ahead
The Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 vice-captain role comes with a specific cricket challenge that no T20I series has yet posed. Here is the number that makes the Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 vice-captain appointment interesting beyond the title.
Eight first-class matches. 207 runs. Average: 17.25. Best score: 93.
Those are his first-class numbers. They are not the numbers of someone who has dominated red-ball cricket the way he has dominated T20 cricket. They are the numbers of a young batter who has been prolific in white-ball formats and has not yet had the extended first-class opportunity required to translate that into red-ball statistics.
The Duleep Trophy 2026 is where that changes. Or begins to change.
Sooryavanshi is expected to open the batting for East Zone alongside Abhimanyu Easwaran — the man who did not get the vice-captaincy but who brings 113 first-class matches of experience to the opening partnership. The specific combination is interesting tactically: Sooryavanshi’s natural attacking instinct alongside Easwaran’s disciplined, accumulation-based opening style. In T20 cricket, Sooryavanshi’s approach is an asset from ball one. In four-day cricket, the question is whether he can maintain patience when the red-ball swings in the morning sessions and the conditions demand defence rather than attack.
He has done it before. His first-class best of 93 suggests he can bat — not just hit. The innings that produced 93 was not a T20 cameo disguised as a first-class knock. It was a genuine red-ball innings that showed the technique exists even if the opportunity to demonstrate it consistently has been limited by the pace of his T20 and international rise.
East Zone play North East Zone in the quarter-final from August 23. Mohammed Shami — who took 37 wickets in the previous Ranji Trophy season across seven outings — will be the bowling spearhead. Mukesh Kumar provides the second-seam option. Shahbaz Ahmed brings left-arm spin. Anukul Roy adds the off-spin dimension. The bowling attack is not weak. The question is what Sooryavanshi does with the batting time the attack gives him.
East Zone Squad — Complete List
Captain: Ishan Kishan (JSCA) Vice-Captain: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi (Bihar)
| Player | State | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Ishan Kishan (c) | Jharkhand | Wicketkeeper-Batter |
| Vaibhav Sooryavanshi (vc) | Bihar | Opening Batter |
| Abhimanyu Easwaran | Bengal | Opening Batter |
| Sudip Kumar Gharami | Bengal | Batter |
| Mohammed Shami | Bengal | Right-Arm Fast |
| Mukesh Kumar | Bengal | Right-Arm Fast |
| Shahbaz Ahmed | Bengal | Left-Arm Spin All-Rounder |
| Suraj Sindhu Jaiswal | Bengal | Right-Arm Fast |
| Virat Singh | Jharkhand | Batter |
| Kumar Kushagra | Jharkhand | Wicketkeeper-Batter |
| Shikhar Mohan | Jharkhand | Batter |
| Subranshu Senapati | Odisha | Batter |
| Abhijit Sarkar | Bengal | Batter |
| Anukul Roy | Jharkhand | Left-Arm Spin |
| Denish Das | Bihar | Batter |
Standbyes: Ayush Loharuka, Sridam Paul, Sambit S Baral, Sharandeep Singh, Swastik Samal
Absent (injury):
- Riyan Parag — right shoulder surgery (post IPL 2026)
- Akash Deep — back surgery (rehab ongoing)
Shami — The Other Big East Zone Story
Before the vice-captaincy announcement, the East Zone squad’s most anticipated name was Mohammed Shami.
The Bengal fast bowler — one of India’s three finest pace bowlers across the last decade alongside Bumrah and Siraj — has had an extended stop-start return from the Achilles injury that kept him out of the 2023-24 Test summer against England. He bowled in IPL 2026 for Sunrisers Hyderabad with enough rhythm to suggest the rehabilitation was working. The Duleep Trophy is where the selectors see whether “enough rhythm for IPL” translates to “enough workload for four-day Test cricket.”
His 37 Ranji Trophy wickets in seven matches in the previous season — before the injury — told the selectors everything they needed to know about his wicket-taking ability in red-ball conditions. The question is whether his body can sustain the demands of a four-day match, bowling 20-plus overs on days when the conditions assist the seam and teams require spells rather than short bursts.
If Shami bowls through the East Zone quarter-final and semifinal without physical issue, the India selectors’ ability to include him in the New Zealand Test squad in October becomes significantly stronger. The Duleep Trophy is his audition. A healthy, wicket-taking Shami at Bengaluru’s CoE in August is the most important result East Zone could produce from a national selection perspective — more significant than whether they win the tournament.
The Kishan-Sooryavanshi Partnership — Senior and Junior
The specific dynamic between Ishan Kishan as captain and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi as vice-captain is worth noting because it already exists in a senior context.
Both are in the same India T20I squad. Both toured Zimbabwe together in July 2026 — Kishan scored 81 off 44 in the second T20I to win Player of the Match, Sooryavanshi scored 81 off 49 in the third T20I to win Player of the Series. Both are from Jharkhand’s broader cricketing ecosystem — Kishan from Jharkhand, Sooryavanshi from neighbouring Bihar. Both play for teams that share the same East Zone structural allegiance.
The captaincy relationship — Kishan as the established senior, Sooryavanshi as the junior learning beside him — mirrors the mentor relationship that Kishan described publicly after Zimbabwe, where he spoke about treating Sooryavanshi “like a younger brother” and the dressing room’s collective effort to keep the teenager focused on cricket rather than the noise of social media.
That relationship, formalised in the East Zone squad’s captaincy structure, means Sooryavanshi enters his first Duleep Trophy appearance as vice-captain with the specific advantage of having a captain who already understands how to manage him.
The Bigger Picture — What This Appointment Confirms
The Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 vice-captain appointment — twelve months after he was a standby player in the same tournament — confirms something about how Indian cricket is thinking about its most exciting teenage talent.
The Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 vice-captain decision reflects a philosophy that is distinctly Indian in its boldness. They are not being cautious. They are not managing his exposure carefully in the way that the ECB might manage a 15-year-old English prodigy, introducing him gradually, protecting him from too much too soon. They are giving him everything simultaneously. International cricket at 15. Vice-captaincy at 15. Red-ball exposure at 15. The full range of cricket’s demands, at an age when most of his contemporaries are playing age-group cricket in state-level Under-19 competitions.
The selector’s quote — “maybe one day he could even captain India” — is not a casual remark. It is the statement of people who have watched this specific player and concluded that the ceiling is genuinely that high. The vice-captaincy of East Zone in August 2026 is the first formal step toward testing whether that ceiling is as high as everyone involved believes it is.
The Duleep Trophy begins August 23. East Zone’s first match is against North East Zone at CoE Ground 2 in Bengaluru. Sooryavanshi will open the batting, wearing the vice-captain’s armband, in his most significant red-ball assignment to date.
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FAQ — Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 Vice-Captain
Q1: What is the story behind the Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Duleep Trophy 2026 vice-captain appointment?
East Zone selectors explained the appointment as a deliberate long-term developmental decision. Selector Pravanjan Mullick said: “We want him to grow, maybe one day he could even captain India. That’s the thought behind giving him the vice-captaincy.” Selector Manish Vardhan added: “We are not thinking about the present alone.” The role gives Sooryavanshi leadership experience alongside Ishan Kishan’s captaincy without putting the full responsibility of the captain’s role on a 15-year-old.
Q2: Why was Abhimanyu Easwaran not chosen as vice-captain of East Zone?
According to Cricinfo, Easwaran was deliberately not considered for the vice-captaincy role despite having 113 first-class appearances and previous captaincy experience with Bengal and India A. The selectors felt that Easwaran did not need the developmental experience of a vice-captaincy at this stage, whereas Sooryavanshi’s long-term leadership growth was better served by the appointment.
Q3: What is Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s first-class cricket record?
Sooryavanshi has played only eight first-class matches, scoring 207 runs in 12 innings at an average of 17.25 with a best score of 93. His modest first-class record contrasts sharply with his T20 performances — 776 IPL runs at SR 237 and six international T20Is including two fifties. The Duleep Trophy 2026 is his most significant extended red-ball assignment.
Q4: Who is the captain of East Zone for Duleep Trophy 2026?
Ishan Kishan has been named captain of East Zone for the Duleep Trophy 2026. The wicketkeeper-batter — who reached a career-best 916 ICC T20I rating points after the Zimbabwe series — leads a squad that includes Mohammed Shami, Mukesh Kumar, Abhimanyu Easwaran and Sooryavanshi as vice-captain.
Q5: Who is missing from East Zone’s Duleep Trophy 2026 squad due to injury?
Riyan Parag is absent from East Zone’s squad because he is recovering from right shoulder surgery undergone after IPL 2026. Akash Deep is also unavailable as he continues rehabilitation from back surgery. Both were considered for the squad but their injury status made selection impossible.
Q6: When does East Zone play their first Duleep Trophy 2026 match?
East Zone play North East Zone in the quarter-final at CoE Ground 2 in Bengaluru from August 23-26. The start time is 9:30 AM IST. East Zone’s squad for the match includes Sooryavanshi as vice-captain, Kishan as captain, Shami leading the bowling attack and Easwaran as the most experienced player with 113 first-class appearances.
