The second round of the 2026-27 Ranji Trophy begins on 18 October, according to Wikipedia’s tournament page and the tournament’s schedule page, with matches spread over several days. One schedule gives the round as 18 to 21 October and the Wikipedia page gives the dates as 18 to 28 October for the round’s fixtures, so IndiaX24 does not give a single end date.
The season is large. It has 38 teams and 135 matches in total, and the tournament runs from 11 October 2026 to 3 March 2027, according to the Wikipedia page. The teams are divided into four Elite Groups, A to D, with eight teams each, and a Plate Group for the developing teams. Four groups of eight make 32 teams, so the Plate Group has six, a subtraction by IndiaX24.
Jammu and Kashmir are the defending champions, having won their first Ranji Trophy title in the previous season, according to the page. That makes them the team that others will be measured against, although the reports reviewed do not describe their form in the current round.
Round 1 produced several clear results. Uttar Pradesh beat Bihar by an innings and 267 runs. Baroda beat Goa by an innings and 135 runs. Vidarbha beat Pondicherry by 160 runs, and Bengal beat Delhi by nine wickets, according to the page. IndiaX24 has reported on the Bengal win over Delhi in an earlier article.
Two of the round 2 fixtures are named. Baroda play Bihar at the Reliance Stadium in Vadodara, and Pondicherry play Madhya Pradesh in Pondicherry, according to the page. The page notes multiple fixtures across all four Elite Groups, and IndiaX24 has not seen the full list, so it names only these two.
The pairing of Baroda and Bihar is a contrast of the opening round’s results. Baroda won by an innings and 135 runs against Goa, and Bihar lost by an innings and 267 runs to Uttar Pradesh, according to the same page. That makes Baroda the favourite on paper, a judgement based on the round 1 margins and not on a source, and a single round is a small sample.
Four-day matches are the format of the Ranji Trophy, which is general background. A team gets points for an outright win, and a first-innings lead in a draw earns a smaller number, according to the usual rules, but the reports reviewed do not give the points system for this season, so IndiaX24 does not state it.
The Ranji Trophy is domestic first-class cricket and is a route to national selection. IndiaX24 has reported on the selection for the T20I series in New Zealand, which is a different format, and the reports reviewed do not link the Ranji results to that squad.
The scale of the competition is large for a domestic tournament. With 135 matches over about five months, from 11 October to 3 March, the season averages about 0.9 matches a day, a division by IndiaX24 that ignores the fact that matches run for four days at a time. The reports reviewed do not give the knockout dates, which come after the group stage.
Teams from smaller cricketing states, such as Pondicherry, Goa and Bihar, play in the Elite Groups alongside traditional strongholds, as the round 1 results show, and the margins in those matches (an innings defeat for Bihar and a 160-run defeat for Pondicherry) reflect the gap that those sides face. The Plate Group provides a separate route for the weakest teams, according to the page.
IndiaX24 will report on the round 2 results and the points table.
Image: A cricket match at a stadium in Raipur (file photo; a stand-in image, not a Ranji Trophy venue). Photo by MohitSingh, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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