Vijay Hazare Trophy

The Vijay Hazare Trophy (officially known as the IDFC First Bank Vijay Hazare Trophy for sponsorship reasons), which superseded the Ranji One Day Trophy in 2007, is an annual limited overs domestic cricket competition organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). It involves the state and union territory teams which take part in the Ranji Trophy. The tournament had been played at zonal level only until 2002–03 when it was expanded to become a national competition. The most successful team since expansion is Tamil Nadu who have won the tournament five times.

History
Until 2006/07, Vijay Hazare Trophy was the title of a national under-19 tournament, involving zonal teams, which had been running since 1983/84. The BCCI then decided to rename the Ranji One Day Trophy, which began in the 1993/94 season, in honour of Vijay Hazare who had died in December 2004. The 2007/08 edition was the first using the current title.

Ahead of the 2018/19 edition, the teams were divided into three elite groups and one plate group. Two of the elite groups had nine teams while the third had ten. The plate group consisted of nine new teams. Teams were grouped on the basis of average points gained in the preceding three seasons. The 2020/21 edition was postponed for several months because of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The 2020–21 Ranji Trophy had been cancelled but, in January 2021, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced that the Vijay Hazare tournament would take place.

Format
Currently, in the 2023–24 season, 38 teams are split into five groups (A to E) as follows:

After playing each team in the group once, the five winners and the best performing runner-up qualify for the quarter final stage directly, while the four other runners-up play in the preliminary quarter finals. The two winners of pre-quarter finals join the remaining six teams in the quarter final stage. In the 2015–16 to 2017–18 seasons, the zonal groups were replaced with four groups of seven each.

Zonal tournaments
From the tournament's inaugural edition as the Ranji One Day Trophy in 1993–94, through to the 2001–02 season, no finals were held, and teams consequently played only within their zones, with no national winner declared. The table below lists the winners of each zone by year. The most successful teams in the zonal phase were Bombay/Mumbai (8 titles), Bengal (6), Karnataka (4), Punjab (4), and Tamil Nadu (4).

National tournaments
During the 2002–03 and 2003–04 seasons, a final round-robin stage was held for the top teams in each zone. Since the 2004–05 tournament, a playoff format including semi-finals and a final has been held, with varying formats. The tournament was still known as the Ranji One Day Trophy until the 2006–07 edition. It was renamed as the Vijay Hazare Trophy ahead of the 2007–08 edition.