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The 2012-13 domestic season will begin with the Irani Cup in Jaipur, between September 21-25. The revamped Ranji Trophy will start on November 2, with the knockouts scheduled for January 2013. The top three teams from Group A and B, and the top two from Group C, will qualify for the quarter-finals of the Ranji Trophy.









Ranji Trophy groups
Group A: Rajasthan, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh, Saurashtra, Railways, Bengal, Punjab, Gujarat
Group B: Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Vidarbha, Delhi, Baroda, Odisha
Group C: Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Services, Tripura, Goa, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam







Twenty-seven Ranji teams have been divided into three groups of nine each. Defending champions Rajasthan are part of Group A, together with three other teams - Mumbai, Hyderabad and Madhya Pradesh - who qualified for the knockouts the previous season. Group B includes the runners-up Tamil Nadu, as well as Haryana, Maharashtra and Karnataka who made it to the knockouts last year. Each of the nine teams in Group C played in the Plate League last year.

The decision to adopt the current format for the domestic season was taken by the BCCI's working committee earlier this month, together with the approval to allow two bouncers an over in limited-overs matches and permit one bowler to bowl a maximum of 12 overs in a 50-over game. The proposals to tweak the rules and the format were made by the BCCI's technical committee earlier in the year, at a meeting headed by Sourav Ganguly.

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