New Delhi: The Vijay Hazare Trophy one-day tournament from Wednesday will be a star-studded affair to start with this season. Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant are expected to play at least the first two games in line with the cricket board’s directive asking its centrally contracted players to feature in domestic games during international breaks.

Kohli and Rohit play only ODIs and both have been in sublime form in the format. Although Delhi’s first match against Andhra on Wednesday will be played in Kohli’s second home, Bengaluru, his first outing to the city since Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s IPL title triumph in June will be at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence in the outskirts. A Karnataka government committee denied permission on Tuesday to hold the game at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium after a safety inspection.

With Kohli, 37, and Pant in the line-up, fans will hope the match is at least on TV. Kohli’s last four ODI innings are two centuries and two unbeaten half-centuries. A Delhi team that has struggled for consistency will be grateful if he teams up with Pant, who will lead the side, to dominate the Andhra bowling in the Elite Group D tie. Pant has been out of India’s white-ball teams since August, 2024.

It will be Kohli’s first domestic game after a home Ranji tie in January against Railways. His last Vijay Hazare game was in 2010. He is also one run short of completing 16,000 runs in List A matches. Among Indians, only Sachin Tendulkar is ahead.

Rohit, 38, has announced that he will play the first two Vijay Hazare games for Mumbai in Elite Group C, against Sikkim and Uttarakhand in Jaipur. He will be back at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium where his India career began to take off early with a first ODI half-century in 2007. Rohit’s last Vijay Hazare games were in 2018 when Mumbai won the title.

The Shardul Thakur-led Mumbai though will be without Yashasvi Jaiswal, who is unwell, and Ajinkya Rahane. However, India’s T20 skipper Suryakumar Yadav will play and it will be an ideal setting, as the attacking batter has struggled to shake off his poor form in the shortest format.

Both Kohli and Rohit too will welcome the opportunity to feature in the premier domestic one-day competition, which will be useful practice ahead of the ODI series against New Zealand starting on January 11.

No Gill for Punjab

Also in Group C, Punjab’s opening tie against Maharashtra will be played in Jaipur, but in the relative anonymity of the Anantam ground. India’s T20I star Abhishek Sharma will feature on Wednesday and it will be a great opportunity for the explosive opening bat to add to his white-ball credentials.

The 25-year-old has played 65 List A games, scoring 2,110 runs at an average of 34.03 with four hundreds and eight fifties.

However, Shubman Gill is still recovering from a toe impact injury he suffered ahead of the abandoned fourth T20I against South Africa in Lucknow and he is expected to play only in some of the later games. The tournament runs until January 18.

The Test and ODI skipper, who has not played much cricket since he suffered a neck injury early in his innings during the Kolkata Test against South Africa early in November, will look forward to at least a couple of outings before he leads the side against the Kiwis. There will be huge interest around Gill’s performance as it will be his first outing since the selectors left out the T20 vice-captain from the squad for the World Cup to be hosted by India and Sri Lanka in February-March.

Punjab left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh too is expected to join up with the Vijay Hazare squad only later. The match is also likely to pit Punjab’s power-hitters against Maharashtra’s Prithvi Shaw, who is bidding to find consistency after switching from Mumbai ahead of this season.

A total of 32 teams have been divided into four Elite groups with six other teams in a Plate group. The top two from each Elite group will qualify for the quarter-finals. The matches will be played across five cities – Bengaluru, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Ranchi.