Most teams in a Ranji Trophy season

29.54 Average runs per wicket in the last Ranji Trophy season, the lowest among the four seasons since 2012-13, when Super League and Plate League concept was abandoned. The runs per wicket figure has kept decreasing season by season in the last four tournaments. It was 33.04 in 2012-13, 31 in 2013-14, and 30.30 in 2014-15. However, the scoring rates have remained nearly the same. With all matches to be played at neutral venues this season, the runs per wicket figure may go down further.

4 Players who have moved to Kerala this season from the other teams, the most for any team apart from Chhattisgarh which is a new team. Jalaj Saxena and Iqbal Abdulla, two of the four who got transferred to Kerala, had played for just one team since their debut. Saxena played for Madhya Pradesh from 2005-06 till last season while Abdulla was part of Mumbai from 2007-08 till last season. Click here for all the details about transfers.

9 Matches that ended within two days in the last season, which raised a major talking point about pitches favouring bowlers way too much. Comparatively, there were only three such finishes in the previous three seasons.

0 Number of times a Ranji Trophy final was played as early as January 7, which is the scheduled date for the finale this season. The previous earliest Ranji final was played from January 11 in two seasons - 2009-10 and 2010-11.

2004-05 The last time a new team was added to the Ranji Trophy - Jharkhand replaced Bihar that season. Chhattisgarh is participating as a new team this time, the 28th team. This season will be the first to have more than 27 teams participating in a Ranji season.

1 Number of teams which have got to the knockout stage in each of the last four Ranji seasons - Mumbai, the defending champions of this season, is the only one. Twice they managed to win the title, once they were knocked out in the quarter-finals and once in semi-finals.

2 Batsmen who have aggregated over 750 runs in each of the last two seasons - Karnataka's Robin Uthappa and Mumbai's Shreyas Iyer. Uthappa made 912 in 2014-15 to be the highest scorer, and scored another 759 runs in 2015-16. Iyer with 809 runs was highest run-getter for Mumbai in 2014-15 while last season he made a mammoth 1321 runs.

1 No of bowlers who have taken 40 or more wickets in each of the last two Ranji seasons - Mumbai pacer Shardal Thakur. He picked up 48 wickets in 2014-15 and 41 last season. He was rewarded with selection for the recent tour of the West Indies but he couldn't make it to the playing XI in any of the four Tests. Odisha pacer Basant Mohanty is the only other bowler who has picked 35-plus wickets in both of the last two seasons - 37 in 2014-15 and 41 in 2015-16.