After a year’s hiatus owing to the pandemic, the Ranji Trophy is all set to return, which is good news, particularly to those Indian cricketers who are neither in Team India’s scheme of things nor have an IPL contract.

The country’s premier domestic competition will be played in a three-month window from November 16 to February 19.

Along with Ranji, U-23, U-19 and U-16 tournaments have also been slotted as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the schedule for the upcoming domestic season. “The BCCI is confident of hosting the domestic season with the health and safety of players and all people involved being paramount,” said a Board release.

The season begins from September 21 with the Senior Women’s One-day League and will be followed by the Senior Women’s One-day Challenger Trophy, which will take place from October 27. The senior men’s cricket will get underway with the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy that begins from October 20.

The Vijay Hazare Trophy (national one-dayers) will start from February 23, soon after Ranji gets over. A total of 2127 domestic games will be played this season across various age groups in the men’s and women’s categories.

The announcement from the Board comes at a time when the pandemic situation in India is gradually improving. However, there’s no mention of the Duleep and Deodhar Trophy in the Board’s calendar.

Last season, the Covid-related circumstances permitted only the senior men’s national T20s and one-dayers, and senior women’s one-day matches.

Players of the age-group levels too should be heaving a sigh of relief as they can finally have game time after more than a year. Besides, the U-19 World Cup too is slated to be held next year in May in the Caribbean, so this certainly was one of the reasons behind slotting the age-group level competitions.

The women too will have a decent share of game time before the squad for the Women’s World Cup in New Zealand gets finalised.

Coming back to Ranji, sources said that it shouldn’t be a truncated affair since the three-month window has been created for it. Calcutta too could be one of the hosts for the Ranji matches.

The Bengal senior men’s squad is likely to begin training around July 15 and may also have a 20-day long camp at the Bengal Cricket Academy in Kalyani.