The Board of Control for Cricket in India on Monday announced the groups and venues for the upcoming Ranji Trophy 2021-22 season. The tournament will kickstart on January 5, 2022.
The Ranji Trophy consists of six groups, five Elite groups, and one Plate group. The defending champions Saurashtra are in Elite Group D along with Railways, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Goa, and Jharkhand. The Giants of domestic cricket, Mumbai, Delhi, and Karnataka have been clubbed together in the Elite Group C. The other teams in the group are Hyderabad, Maharashtra, and Uttrakhand.
The Elite Group B consists of the runners-up of 2019-20 season Bengal along with Vidarbha, Haryana, Kerala, Tripura, and Rajashtan. Punjab, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Services, and Assam are in Elite Group A, while Elite Group E includes Andhra, Uttar Pradesh, Baroda, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Pondicherry.
The Plate group comprises Chandigarh, Meghalaya, Bihar, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh.
Here are the groups for Ranji Trophy 2021-22
Saurashtra (defending champs) are clubbed in Group D with a fairly easy group
Group C being the group of death with Mumbai, Delhi, Karnataka pic.twitter.com/pK7cZDbIex
— Nash (@NashvSant) August 31, 2021
Kolkata to host the final of Ranji Trophy 2021-22
Players will have to undergo a mandatory five-day quarantine period. The BCCI also announced the venues for Ranji Trophy 2021-22. All the matches will be held at neutral venues.
Kolkata will host the finals as well as all the knockout matches for this season, starting from March 16. The city will also host the Elite Group B matches in the round league. The other hosts for the round league matches of Ranji Trophy 2021-22 are – Mumbai (Elite A), Bengaluru (Elite C), Ahmedabad (Elite D), Thiruvananthapuram (Elite E), and Chennai (Plate).
As per ANI, each Ranji Trophy team squad will have a maximum of 30 members. Out of the 30, there has to be a minimum of 20 players. The rest can be the management and support staff members.