NEW DELHI: The prestigious Duleep Trophy tournament is set to commence in Bengaluru on June 28 with Central Zone taking on East Zone at the Alur Cricket Stadium, while North Zone will play against North East Zone at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on the opening day.
North East Zone is the sixth and latest entrant in the domestic first-class tournament. These matches will serve as quarterfinals, with the winners progressing to the semi-finals.
The defending champions, West Zone, and the runners-up, South Zone, have been given direct entry into the semi-finals based on their performance in the previous season.
The final match of the Duleep Trophy will take place at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on July 12, where the top two teams will compete for the championship.

The squads:
West Zone: Priyank Panchal (captain), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Harvik Desai (wicketkeeper), Prithvi Shaw, Het Patel (wicketkeeper), Sarfaraz Khan, Arpit Vasavada, Atit Seth, Shams Mulani, Yuvraj Dodiya, Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, Chetan Sakariya, Chintan Gaja, Arzan Nagwaswalla.
South Zone: Hanuma Vihari (captain), Mayank Agarwal (vice-captain), Sai Sudharsan, Ricky Bhui (wicketkeeper), KS Bharat (wicketkeeper), R Samarth, Washington Sundar, Sachin Baby, Pradosh Ranjan Paul, Sai Kishore, V Kaverappa, V Vyshak, KV Sasikanth, Darshan Misal, Tilak Varma.
East Zone: Abhimanyu Easwaran (captain), Shahbaz Nadeem (vice-captain), Santanu Mishra, Sudip Gharami, Riyan Parag, A. Majumdar, Bipin Saurabh, A Porel (wicketkeeper), K Kushagra (wicketkeeper), Shahbaz Ahmed, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Anukul Roy, M Mura Singh, Ishan Porel.
North Zone: Mandeep Singh (captain), Prashant Chopra, Dhruv Shorey, Manan Vohra, Prabhsimran Singh (wicketkeeper), Ankit Kumar, AS Kalsi, Harshit Rana, Abid Mushtaq, Jayant Yadav, Pulkit Narang, Nishant Sandhu, Sidharth Kaul, Vaibhav Arora, Baltej Singh.
Central Zone: Shivam Mavi (captain), Upendra Yadav (vice-captain and wicketkeeper), Vivek Singh, Himanshu Mantri, Kunal Chandela, Shubham Sharma, Amandeep Khare, Rinku Singh, Akshay Wadkar, Dhruv Jurel, Saurabh Kumar, Manav Sathar, Saransh Jain, Avesh Khan, Yash Thakur.
North-East Zone: Rongsen Jonathan (captain), Nilesh Lamichaney (vice-captain), Kishan Lyngdoh, Langlonyamba, A.R. Ahlawat, Joseph Lalthankhuma, Prafullamani (wicketkeeper), Dippu Sangma, Jotin Pheiroijam, Imliwati Lemtur, Palzor Tamang, Kishan Sinha, Akash Kumar Choudhary, Rajkumar Rex Singh, Nagaho Chishi. Reserves: Lee Yong Lepcha, Nabam Abo, Dika Ralte.