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The Ranji Trophy will continue to be held in two phases. The tournament will begin on October 15 and will continue till November 19 in the first phase, while the second phase will begin on January 22.
During its meeting on Saturday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) apex council decided that hosting the tournament phase-wise will help players manage their workload better and there would be enough gap in between.
In between the Ranji Trophy – from mid-November to mid-January, the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and the Vijay Hazare Trophy will be conducted. The SMAT and the Senior Women’s T20 knockout matches will be played in a Super League format, where each team will play three games in the league, following which the top team from Group A and B will feature in the final.
According to the insiders, this has been done to make the tournament more exciting.
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It was also deliberated that for one-dayers and T20s for men’s, women’s events, the bottom-six teams from the 2024-25 season rankings will play in the plate group. One team will be promoted from Plate to Elite & one team will be relegated from Elite to Plate for the 2026-27 season grouping, a change from the previous year, where two teams were shifted. Following the usual format, all multi-day men’s tournaments (Senior & Junior), one team will be promoted & one team will be relegated for 2026-27 season grouping.
Ranji Trophy Groups for 2025-26 season
Elite A: TN, Baroda, Jharkhand, Odisha, UP, Andhra, Nagaland
Elite B: Saurashtra, Chandigarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, MP, Punjab, Goa
Elite C: Gujarat, Haryana, Services, Bengal, Railways, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Assam
Elite D: Mumbai, J&K, HP, Delhi, Hyderabad, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Puducherry
Plate: Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim, Manipur, Arunachal
Meanwhile, the Duleep Trophy & Senior Women’s Challengers will feature six zonal teams – North Zone, East Zone, North East Zone, Central Zone, West Zone, South Zone. Unlike the last time, where the national selection committee picked the squads, this time the teams will be picked by the Zonal Selection Committee as was the tradition. The Duleep Trophy will open the 2025-26 domestic season in late August and September. The Irani Cup will run from October 1 to 5.
There’s a possibility that BCCI will introduce uniformity in pay for all scorers across all stadiums in India for international matches. It has been decided that scorers will be given Rs. 25,000 per match day for an ODI and Test matches. For a T20I, they will be given Rs 12,500 per match day
Meanwhile, Hyderabad, Rajkot, Indore, Nagpur, Ranchi, Guwahati, Visakhapatnam and Thiruvananthapuram were chosen as the venues for the 3 ODIs and 5 T20Is against New Zealand next year.
IND vs NZ white-ball series schedule:
3 ODIs:
Hyderabad (Jan 11, 2026)
Rajkot (Jan 14, 2026)
Indore (Jan 18, 2026)
5 T20IS:
Nagpur (January 21, 2026)
Ranchi (January 23, 2026)
Guwahati (January 25, 2026)
Vishakapatnam (January 28, 2026)
Thiruvananthapuram (January 31, 2026)
