The waning interest in one-dayers and the growing popularity of the Twenty20 version was evident at BCCI's Tour Programmes and Fixtures Committee meeting here on Wednesday, as it cancelled the Deodhar Trophy, the country's premier zonal one-day tournament, to reintroduce the T20 domestic competition in the itinerary.
Ironically, the reason the Deodhar Trophy had to make way for the Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament was the early start to the Indian Premier League's Season III. A top official conceded that that the March 18 start of the IPL — a month ahead of schedule as compared to Season I — left the committee with the near-impossible task of fitting in too many tournaments in too few days. "The change of the IPL schedule was non-negotiable. So we had to drop a tournament. Since there were already a few one-day tournaments, we dropped the zonal event," he said.
The 50-50 tournaments that will figure in the 2009-10 calendar are the Ranji one-dayers, the Challenger Trophy and the Corporate Cup.
There was also a strong view among the committee members to re-introduce the T20 Mushtaq Ali Trophy — a tournament that got dropped from the calendar last year because of the IPL. "With the growing interest in the shortest version and importance given to the version internationally, we thought bringing it back was a good idea," said a committee member.
Another change in the domestic season involves the Duleep Trophy, the zonal four-day tournament, which has also been crunched. Unlike the long-drawn league format it's played in, the Duleep Trophy will now be played on a knock-out basis.
Besides these decisions, the committee also finalised the venues for the seven-match one-day series between India and Australia, which will be played between October 25 and November 11, right after the ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa.
Guwahati, Delhi, Mumbai, Mohali, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Jaipur will host matches during the series against Australia. The match-schedule will be finalised after the logistics are worked out, the BCCI announced in a statement.
However, the fixtures for Sri Lanka's tour of India and the tri-series in September between Sri Lanka, India and New Zealand will be finalised in August at the BCCI working committee meeting.
Sri Lanka is scheduled to tour India for three Tests and five ODIs soon after Australia's tour to India.
