Vijay Hazare Trophy kicks off from September 19

The teams have been divided into four categories—Elite A, Elite B, Elite C and Plate.

The BCCI has sent a missive to the state units mentioning that the Elite Group A matches will be held at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru and at the KSCA grounds in Alur.

The Vijay Hazare Trophy will get underway in four different states from September 19. With the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) deciding to start the domestic season with the limited-over tournaments, the teams have been divided into four categories—Elite A, Elite B, Elite C and Plate.

The BCCI has sent a missive to the state units mentioning that the Elite Group A matches will be held at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru and at the KSCA grounds in Alur.

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Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium and Air Force Ground in New Delhi’s Palam will play host to the Elite Group B matches. The Elite Group C fixtures will be held in Chennai.

The Plate group matches, which will see the participation of the nine new teams, will be held in Gujarat’s Nadiad, Baroda and Anand.

The venues for the last-eight stage matches, however, have not been announced yet. The final will be on October 20.

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With 37 teams featuring in the tournament, Elite A and Elite B categories will have nine teams each, while Elite C will have 10 teams.

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The nine new teams will play in the Plate group. While Group A, B and Plate play 12 rounds in the league stage, Group C plays 15 rounds . A combination of five teams from groups A and B (three from A and two from B) will make it to the quarterfinals, while the top two teams from Group C will make it to last-eight along with the top team from Plate category.

A total of eight teams will play the quarters, of which four will make it to the semis. This will be followed by the final.

The categories

Elite A: Goa, Maharashtra, Baroda, Mumbai, Himachal, Punjab, Vidarbha, Karnataka, Railways.

Elite B: MP, Hyderabad, UP, Saurashtra, Kerala, Andhra, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Odisha.

Elite C: Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Services, Tripura, Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Team Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu.

Plate: Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Puducherry.