CHENNAI: One of the final domestic competitions of the calendar year for women, the Senior Women’s One Day Trophy, is scheduled to start across seven venues from Wednesday. A total of 37 teams divided into five groups (two groups of eight teams each and three groups of seven teams each) will compete in a round-robin format tournament followed by playoffs to determine the winner.
The top two teams from all five groups will qualify for the knockouts. Group toppers from all five groups will directly qualify for the quarterfinals & will be ranked from 1-5 based on their Points/Wins/NRR. 2nd placed teams from each group will be ranked from 6-10 based on their points/wins/NRR. The sixth-ranked team will directly qualify for the quarterfinal along with the group toppers. Teams ranked 7-10 will play pre-quarterfinals.
Defending champions Railways have won the tournament 15 times since the inception with Delhi and Bengal bagging the title once each. Railways will start their campaign against Himachal Pradesh in Kolkata, while Senior Women’s T20 Trophy winners Mumbai will take on runners-up of One Day Trophy, Uttarakhand, in Ahmedabad. MD Thirush Kamini will captain Tamil Nadu, who made it to the quarterfinals in the previous season.
The tournament running between December 4 and 30 is a golden opportunity for the likes of Shafali Verma to make her way back to the national team. After a few below-par outings in the ODI format for India, Verma was dropped from the squad for the three-match ODI series against Australia. Players like Tejal Hasabnis, who was amongst the highest run scorers of the previous edition of the One Day Trophy and Delhi’s Priya Mishra, the highest wicket-taker of the competition have recently made debuts in the format for India which underline the importance of the competition.