The 2018 edition of the domestic one-day tournament, the Vijay Hazare Trophy will start from September 19, in four different states. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has decided to start the domestic season with the limited-over tournaments, and the teams have been divided into four categories—Elite A, Elite B, Elite C, and Plate.

The Elite Group A matches will be held at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru and at the KSCA grounds in Alur, as per the missive sent by BCCI to state units. 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.

Elite A and Elite B categories will have nine teams each, while Elite C will have 10 teams with a total of 37 teams participating in the tournament.

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.

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.

(with inputs from sportstarlive.com)