BCCI announces India's domestic schedule for 2023-24 season

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Tuesday announced the schedule of India’s domestic season 2023-24. The season will see a total of 1846 matches being played between the last week of June 2023 and March 2024.

Despite monsoon threat, the season kickstarts in June with the return of the Duleep Trophy, India's secondary first-class competition after the Ranji Trophy. It will be held from June 28 to July 16 with notably six zonal representative sides across Central, South, North, East, West and North-East India participating. The tournament will be held in the knock-out format. 

The same format will apply to the Deodhar Trophy, the zonal List A competition, which will be played between July 24 to August 3 in a league round-robin followd by knock-out version. The tournament makes its return after being suspended from the domestic calendar at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The caravan will then head to the Irani Cup contest from October 1 to 5 between current Ranji Trophy champions Saurashtra and the Rest of India. 

After the completion of the Duleep, Deodhar and Irani Cups, the Indian domestic calendar will finally enter the senior state leg with the start of the National T20 Championship - the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy - from October 16. The group stage of the competition will last until October 27 and the knock-outs will be played between October 31 to November 6. 

The 50-overs tourney Vijay Hazare Trophy will be taking centre stage from November 23. The tournament runs till December 15, with the knock-out stage kickstarting from December 9. 

The coveted Ranji Trophy will be held separately for the Elite and the Plate bunch of teams once again to ensure the quality isn't further compromised after suffering a major dip during the Covid realms. 

The Elite men's senior event will have its league stage running from January 5 until February 19 with four groups of eight teams each, playing seven matches ahead of the knock-out stage that will run from February 23 to March 14. 

The Plate tournament will see the remaining six sides face each other once from January 5 till February 19 ahead of the two semifinals and the final that is supposed to finish on February 22. 

T20 Trophy to kickstart women's domestic season

The senior women's domestic season will start off with the Women's T20 Trophy on October 19 and will be running until November 9. The tournament will have five groups split into two of eight teams and the seven apiece for the remaining, playing a league round ahead of the knock-outs. 

The exact same format will be followed for the Senior Women's One-Day Trophy, the 50-overs version, from January 4 till January 26.

While there is still no first-class cricket for the Indian women's cricketers, the Inter-zonal T20 trophy has been retained in the calendar. It will be held between the T20 state competition and its List A version from November 24 until December 4. 

Indian domestic season 2023-24: