Karun Nair made a triple-century when Karnataka and Tamil Nadu last clashed in a Ranji Trophy fixture, in March 2015 © PTI
The BCCI has advanced the Ranji Trophy quarter-finals by a day and they will now begin from December 23. Defending champions Mumbai will play Hyderabad, who are in the quarter-finals for the first time since 2011-12, in Raipur while Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, finalists in 2014-15, will square off in Visakhapatnam.
Jharkhand, the Group B toppers and one of only two teams in the league stages to have five wins, will play Haryana in Baroda, while Odisha, in the knockouts for the first time in a decade, will face Gujarat in Jaipur. The two semi-finals were advanced by two days to start from January 1 in Rajkot and Nagpur, and the final, earlier scheduled for January 12, will be played from January 10 in Indore.
It is understood the BCCI rejigged the schedule to ensure sufficient break between each stage of the knockouts. “We have to adjust the calendar for the right gaps,” a BCCI official told ESPNcricinfo. “The older schedule was the way it was because of the rescheduled matches. This one works better.”
The delay in the announcement of the knockout clashes was a result of the postponement of a fixture between Odisha and Jharkhand, which determined the top team in Group B. The match was originally scheduled to be held in Dindigul along with the other ninth-round matches from December 7. However, the game was rescheduled to December 15 in Thiruvananthapuram following the death of Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo