The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is all set to conduct the Vijay Hazare Trophy from February 20 to March 14, with the teams entering the bio-secure bubble from February 13 in order to go through three COVID tests.

The domestic 50-over tournament will be held across six cities. Surat, Indore, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Jaipur are five of the six venues while Eight Plate Group teams will be playing their matches at various grounds across Tamil Nadu.

According to the BCCI protocol, the players will undergo three RT-PCR tests in their respective bio-bubble and three more on arrival before the start of the knock-out stages (pre quarter-finals) from March 7.

Coming to the teams’ slotting, BCCI notification confirmed that the Elite Group A will have Gujarat, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Tripura, Baroda and Goa with venue being Surat.

Group B comprises Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha and Andhra Pradesh with venue being Indore.

The Group C matches will be organised in Bengaluru with hosts Karnataka, UP, Kerala, Odisha, Railways and Bihar being the six teams.

The Group D teams are Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Puducherry and matches are due to be held in Jaipur.

The Group E matches will be played in Kolkata with hosts Bengal slotted alongside Services, Jammu and Kashmir, Saurashtra, Haryana, Chandigarh.

The Plate Group matches, which will be held in different grounds of Tamil Nadu, will see Uttarakhand, Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim facing each other.

(With PTI inputs)