BCCI Technical Committee to meet on June 4

MUMBAI: The Technical Committee of the BCCI, headed by Sunil Gavaskar, will meet on June 4 at Bangalore.

"The Technical Committee is to meet at Bangalore on June four. It will discuss the suggestions put forth by captains and managers of last year's Ranji Trophy teams at the one-day conclave (held in Mumbai last month)," said BCCI's Chief Administrative Manager Ratnakar Shetty.

The BCCI has already decided to revamp the Ranji Trophy format for the 2008-09 season by reducing the number of teams of the Elite Division from the present 15 to ten, but this has created a divide among the associations on how to go about it, according to another top BCCI source.

"All the teams should be given a level playing field to make it to the top ten in the 2008-09 season. The ideal way will be to scrap the Elite and Plate divisions for the next season (2007-08)," he says.

"Splitting the 27 teams into three groups with equal distribution of strong and weak sides and then promoting the top three teams in each group plus the Ranji Trophy winners into the 2008-09 Elite division would prevent lot of heart burns," the source feels.

The big question is whether the BCCI's Technical Committee would agree to the suggestion of scrapping the two-division system temporarily for one season to get to the bigger picture.

The decision to prune the Elite Division for the season after next was decided by the board's all-powerful Working Committee at its World Cup review meeting here last month.