The Cricket Board is to add four more teams and make its annual Corporate Trophy tournament, scheduled between September 1-8, into a 16-team affair. "The Corporate Trophy championship will have 16 teams and no team will have more than four BCCI contracted players," BCCI president Shashank Manohar told reporters on Saturday. Manohar said that matches would be held in Bangalore, Vishakapatnam, Jaipur and Jodhpur.
Last year, the tournament involved twelve teams and this year four more teams would be added, according to BCCI CAO, Prof Ratnakar Shetty. "We will send out invitations to 20 or 21 corporates and then decide on the teams. All these teams should have players on their rolls and not on contract. The proposal is for a level playing field and that no team can have more than four BCCI contracted players in the playing eleven," he explained. "The teams would be split into four groups of four each," he added.