Vijay Hazare to start on Feb 20

BCCI secretary Jay Shah on Saturday released the schedule with Surat, Indore, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Jaipur being five of the six venues. Eight Plate Group teams will play their matches at various grounds across Tamil Nadu.

As per the BCCI protocol, the players will undergo three RT-PCR tests in their respective bio-bubbles and three more on arrival before the start of the knockout stages (pre quarter-finals) on March 7. According to the BCCI notification, Elite Group A will comprise Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Hyderabad, Tripura, Baroda and Goa. The venue will be Surat.

Group B consists of Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha and Andhra Pradesh with Indore being the venue. The Group C matches will be held in Bengaluru with host Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, Railways and Bihar being the six teams.

The Group D states are Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Puducherry and matches are scheduled in Jaipur. The Group E games will be held in Kolkata with host Bengal clubbed alongside Services, Jammu and Kashmir, Saurashtra, Haryana and Chandigarh.

The Plate Group matches will be held across various grounds in Tamil Nadu and the teams are Uttarakhand, Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim.