Duleep Trophy set to experience another format change

During the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the board made an important decision about the Duleep Trophy.

Duleep Trophy is a first-class cricket tournament. Previously, this tournament was organised between the zonal teams of Indian cricket. However, the ongoing Indian domestic cricket started with the Duleep Trophy with four teams: India A, India B, India C, and India D.

India A won the Duleep Trophy 2024/25

During the Duleep Trophy 2024/25, Shubman Gill led India A and Abhimanyu Easwaran led India B. Meanwhile, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Shreyas Iyer led India C and India D, respectively. After the first round, Gill left the India A squad for international duty, and Mayank Agarwal took the leadership role for the team.

The Duleep Trophy 2024/25 was completely a round-robin competition where each team faced the other teams once. India A ultimately won the Duleep Trophy 2024/25 title with the highest 12 points. Despite losing their first fixture against India B by 76 runs, India A won their next two matches against India D and India C by 187 runs and 132 runs, respectively.

However, the BCCI wasn’t impressed with the latest four-day Duleep Trophy matches, as these didn’t serve its purpose.

Duleep Trophy will see the return of inter-zonal competition

In the latest BCCI AGM, it has been decided that the Duleep Trophy will return in the zonal format from the next season (2025/26). In the 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons, there were six teams in the Duleep Trophy: East Zone, West Zone, South Zone, North Zone, Central Zone, and North-East Zone.

During the recently concluded Duleep Trophy, there were questions on some selections. With the return of inter-zonal competition, the selection of each team will happen on a zone basis.

Unlike the latest Duleep Trophy, the inter-zonal based Duleep Trophy followed a knockout stage tournament.