Ranji Trophy, the red-ball domestic cricket tournament is all set to return after a gap of two years. BCCI was forced to postpone the domestic tournament due to rising of COVID 19. . 2022, Ranji Trophy season was originally scheduled to start from January 13. The tournament couldn’t be conducted last year due to the pandemic.
However, Board of Control for Cricket in India recently confirmed that the tournament is going to be held in two phases before the league stage of IPL, and the knockout stage will be held after it. And the domestic tournament is held from February 16 to March 5, as per the revised scheduled prepared by the BCCI.
BCCI sources told that the likely venues for the 38-team event are Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Trivandrum, Cuttack, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Baroda and Rajkot, which means nine separate bio-bubbles will be created. BCCI secretary Jay Shah announced last week that the red ball event will be held in two phases. The knockouts will be held in June.
The format has been tweaked and there will be eight groups of four teams each with the plate group comprising six teams. Teams which fail to advance to the next stage will end up playing only three games compared to five in the original format, effectively impacting the players’ match fee.