During the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the board made an important decision about the Duleep Trophy. 

Duleep Trophy is a first-class cricket tournament. Previously, this tournament was organised between the zonal teams of Indian cricket. However, the ongoing Indian domestic cricket started with the Duleep Trophy with four teams: India A, India B, India C, and India D. 

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India A won the Duleep Trophy 2024/25

During the Duleep Trophy 2024/25, Shubman Gill led India A and Abhimanyu Easwaran led India B. Meanwhile, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Shreyas Iyer led India C and India D, respectively. After the first round, Gill left the India A squad for international duty, and Mayank Agarwal took the leadership role for the team. 

The Duleep Trophy 2024/25 was completely a round-robin competition where each team faced the other teams once. India A ultimately won the Duleep Trophy 2024/25 title with the highest 12 points. Despite losing their first fixture against India B by 76 runs, India A won their next two matches against India D and India C by 187 runs and 132 runs, respectively.

However, the BCCI wasn’t impressed with the latest four-day Duleep Trophy matches, as these didn’t serve its purpose.  

Duleep Trophy will see the return of inter-zonal competition

In the latest BCCI AGM, it has been decided that the Duleep Trophy will return in the zonal format from the next season (2025/26). In the 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons, there were six teams in the Duleep Trophy: East Zone, West Zone, South Zone, North Zone, Central Zone, and North-East Zone. 

During the recently concluded Duleep Trophy, there were questions on some selections. With the return of inter-zonal competition, the selection of each team will happen on a zone basis.  

Unlike the latest Duleep Trophy, the inter-zonal based Duleep Trophy followed a knockout stage tournament.