Ranji Trophy: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is planning to organize the Ranji Trophy from January 5 next year. According to reports, the Ranji Trophy will be held from January 5, 2022, to March 20, 2022. All the teams will practice for two days after 5 days of quarantine. After this, all the teams will play in the domestic season from January 13. For the tournament, all the teams have been categorized into six different groups. This year all the Ranji Trophy matches will be played in Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Trivandrum and Chennai. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ranji Trophy was cancelled last year.
On Monday, the BCCI has sent the schedule of the domestic season to all the state cricket boards. The knockout rounds of the Ranji Trophy will be played in Kolkata from February 20. Before this, all the teams reaching the knockout round will once again have to be quarantined for 5 days. The quarter-final matches will be played from February 28 to March 3. The semi-final matches will be played from March 8 to 12, while the final of the tournament will be played from March 16 to 20.
Five elite groups and one plate group have been formed for the Ranji Trophy. There are six teams in the elite group while eight teams have been kept in the plate group. Out of this, Group C is being considered as the 'Group of Death'. In this group, the teams include Mumbai, Karnataka, Delhi, Hyderabad, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand. Defending champion Saurashtra has been placed in Elite Group D along with Tamil Nadu, Railways, J&K, Jharkhand and Goa.
List of teams for group matches and their match venues
- Elite A: Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Services and Assam. (Venue- Mumbai)
- Elite B: Bengal, Vidarbha, Rajasthan, Kerala, Haryana and Tripura. (Venue- Bangalore)
- Elite C: Karnataka, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand. (Venue- Kolkata)
- Elite D: Saurashtra, Tamil Nadu, Railways, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand and Goa. (Venue- Ahmedabad)
- Elite E: Andhra, Uttar Pradesh, Baroda, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Puducherry. (Venue- Trivandrum)
- Plate Group: Chandigarh, Meghalaya, Bihar, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. (Venue- Chennai)