2026-27 Irani Cup Schedule: We are just a couple of days away from the start of the Irani Cup 2026/27, as some of the most high-profile names in domestic cricket will take to the field for arguably the biggest prize in red-ball cricket in India.
The Irani Cup, also called the Irani Trophy, is an annual one-match competition that pits the winner of the previous Ranji Trophy season against a “Rest of India” team. The ROI side comprises some of the best performers in the Ranji Trophy and some big names who are not currently representing the national team.
Today we will learn about the dates, location, squads, and even a little history of the Irani Trophy.
The first edition of the Irani Cup was played in the 1959/60 season. Back then, it was a one-time match played to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Ranji Trophy. The match was played between Bombay and the Rest of India.
With it being a First-Class red-ball match, the Irani Cup games often end in a draw. However, to ensure a winner of the trophy, the same rules that are used in knockout matches of the Ranji Trophy apply, which is to say the team that leads after the first innings is awarded the cup.
62 Irani Trophy games have been played throughout history. Out of these, the Rest of India team has won 29, the trophy has been shared twice, and the Ranji winner has won it on 31 occasions.
Of the state teams, Mumbai (fka Bombay) has won it the most times, on 15 separate occasions, to be accurate.
The defending champions of this competition are Vidarbha, who, after winning the 2024/25 Ranji Trophy, then defeated Rest of India in Nagpur by 93 runs. The last time ROI won the Irani Trophy was in the 2023/24 season, when they beat Saurashtra by a whopping 175 runs in Rajkot.
2026-27 Irani Cup Schedule And Dates
We now arrive at the Irani Cup 2026-27. The match will see a Rest of India squad take on the current Ranji Trophy champions, first-time winner Jammu & Kashmir.
The match will be played at J&K’s home ground, the Sher-e-Kashmir Stadium in the capital city of Srinagar. The match will start on Thursday, October 1, with the last date for the match being October 5.
The Rest of India squad is quite interesting, filled to the brim with the who’s who of domestic Indian cricket. The team is captained by Rishabh Pant and features the likes of Sarfaraz Khan, Mukesh Kumar, and Manav Suthar.
Meanwhile, Jammu & Kashmir features a squad quite similar to the one that won the Ranji Trophy, barring the notable exception of pace bowler Auqib Nabi, who is currently a part of the Indian team that is playing an ODI series against the West Indies.
Here are the squads for Irani Cup 2026-27 –
Jammu & Kashmir Squad
Paras Dogra (C), Shubham Khajuria, Qamran Iqbal, Yawer Hassan, Kanhaiya Wadhawan (wk), Abdul Samad, Shubham Pundir, Abid Mushtaq, Sahil Lotra, Vanshaj Sharma, Kawalpreet Singh, Umran Malik, Rohit Sharma, Sunil Kumar, Rydham Sharma, Lone Nasir, Umar Nazir Mir, Waseem Bashir
Rest of India Squad
Rishabh Pant (C)(wk), Sarfaraz Khan (vc), Sanat Sangwan, Aryan Juyal (wk), Sudip Kumar Gharami, Ayush Doseja, Smaran Ravichandran, Saransh Jain, Anukul Roy, Manav Suthar, Shikhar Mohan, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Mukesh Choudhary, Aryan Pandey
Irani Cup 2026-27 will be the first red-ball tournament in BCCI’s 2026-27 domestic season and will precede the 2026/2 season of the Ranji Trophy, which will commence on October 11.
Check Out: Irani Cup 2026-27 Date and Schedule
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