The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy is the domestic T20 tournament in India organized by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The tournament had its first edition in 2009-10 and 2019-20 edition will be the eleventh.
The tournament is named as a tribute to the Indian opening batsman who played 11 Tests and over 200 First Class games. This tournament is one of the annual tournaments organized by the BCCI in the domestic circuit and these matches qualify for the global T20 records. It is one of the main sources of cricketers to the India national cricket team apart from the IPL.
Baroda and Gujarat have won the title twice previously and other one time winners include Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, East Zone, Delhi and Karnataka, who are also the defending champions for the 2019-20 edition).
A total of 37 teams will be divided in 5 groups where 3 groups will contain seven teams each and the remaining 2 will have 8 teams each. Each team will play every other team in the group. After a total of 7 rounds, the top two teams from each group will move forward to the Super League stage. In this stage, each team will play a fixture against one team from every other group. The top four teams at the end of the Super League stage will make it to the semi-final stages of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2019-20. While the tournament will begin on 8 November 2019, the final will be conducted on 1 December 2019.
The first three groups will be of seven teams each. They are:
Group A: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Baroda, Goa and Services.
Group B: Tripura, Vidarbha, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Manipur, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
Group C: Maharashtra, Railways, Arunachal Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Hyderabad, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.
The remaining two groups will have eight teams each. They are:
Group D: Mumbai, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Haryana, Puducherry, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Bengal.
Group E: Jammu and Kashmir, Sikkim, Jharkhand, Odisha, Delhi, Gujarat, Saurashtra and Nagaland.
Andhra Pradesh and Bihar will play the first match of the Syed Mushtaq Trophy on 8 November 2019 at the South Eastern Railway Stadium in Visakhapatnam to begin the proceedings.